That is the West, Mattie. That is what it is like here.
In any event, that atmosphere formed the cauldron in which my troubles began to brew. Again, I will not belabor details except to say I have been accused of taking part in both a botched stage robbery and the murder of the driver, charges which, I assure you, are utterly meritless. That does not mean, however, they have not gained traction in certain quarters.
Ironically, one such quarter is inhabited by none other than my counterfeit wife, Kate.
We parted ways before I arrived here. The woman simply cannot abide any serious connection I share with any other living thing. She consigned to the fire more than a few letters I composed for you, and her relentless attempts to drive a wedge between me and Wyatt finally outlasted my patience.
She had gone off to Prescott to live, only to weary of the place, since it contained no scapegoat but herself for her daily aggravations. That and boredom obliged her to seek out my company, if only to recover her most reliable focus of disappointment and blame.
Meanwhile, accusations against me here rose from whispers to shouts as Kate returned to town, and when I failed to rise to the bait of her tantrums, she took to waltzing through every saloon that would serve her, drinking and jabbering with equal exuberance.
Naturally, this did not escape the attention of the Cowboys and their lawman friends. Pouring liberally from a bottle as they sat Kate down for a chat, they goaded her into the most absurd, acrimonious, and patently false “testimony” ever concocted since the Pharisees railroaded Christ.
I was arrested, but a mere four days later the prosecutor himself, having reviewed the bill against me, asked that the case be dismissed. He told the court that nothing resembling viable evidence could be mounted against me.
Kate tried to justify her betrayal as a desperate, last-ditch scheme to pry me away from Wyatt. How having me hang for killing a man I never harmed would somehow enhance our chances of being together escapes me, but such are the impenetrable workings of her mind.
Regardless, I may have been free from custody but not from scrutiny or suspicion. I told Wyatt I realized my troubles were driving a wedge between him and his more respectable allies in town. I said, if he needed me to do so, I would leave to spare his reputation.
To his credit, Wyatt did not accept my offer, but did beg me to “pack that woman off and soon.” And so I told Kate we were through, this time for good. Hopefully, she will stay away, though God knows that woman has a way of creeping back, like some insidious infection.
That is where matters stand now. Once again, I apologize for this litany of misfortune, which I am sure must vex you. I know you believe me to be a better man than what my life out here might suggest. I know, as well, that you mean that to inspire, not condemn.
Have no misgivings, I have peered within my soul relentlessly, seeking the truth about myself and my nature. I do not believe, however, that what I have discovered bears too great a resemblance to the man you think me to be.
And yet, I cannot help but believe that who and what I am reveals any less the handiwork of God than the rest of creation, for even the Devil’s mischief is preordained—thus Lucifer’s nickname, the Lord’s Left Hand.
Perhaps, however, if God indeed forgives, can we not hope that acceptance of our true if lesser natures is not just permissible, but justified?
In particular, does there remain a chance that you might find something within my soul worthy of your own forgiveness?
With a hopeful heart,
John Henry
***
October 26, 1881
My Dearest John Henry:
I have read with great interest—and, I must confess, heaviness of heart—your most recent letter.
In particular, though it appears you have ended, once and for all, your arrangement with this other woman, you no longer ask that I join you, merely forgive. It would seem that the distance you have traveled these past eight years should be measured in something other than miles.
Regardless, your decision to remain away has sealed mine. I have, perhaps, held onto an illusion too long, without even clearly knowing it. The prospect that this separation might someday end and you would return home became a kind of invisible companion, always there, even if I was not aware of its presence.
I can no longer afford to be so blithely ignorant. I need to shake off all false promises, and commit myself body and soul to my own calling. With that in mind, I have begun preparations to join the Sisters of Mercy at their convent in Savannah. I will begin as a postulate, then enter my novitiate, gradually ascending toward final vows.
This will all take time, of course, not merely because of the arduous spiritual regimen. There are currently no openings here in the South, and I refuse to pursue one in the North. I have no trouble summoning the patience to wait, for reasons I am sure you can countenance.
I have not forgotten what Union troops did to our home and the land, nor what imprisonment at their hands did to my poor father. They broke him, destroyed him, it is as simple as that.
Ask me to forgive you and all you have done, in an instant I can oblige. But forgive them, and that? No. Never. And I have confessed as much to Our Lord.
That is all my news—far less perilous than yours. And yet no less dramatic, perhaps.
I fear for you, John Henry. From your own report, your life is in perpetual danger, and attributing these misfortunes to an atmospheric abstraction, this insidious trouble that hangs in the air, strikes me as evasive, even glib.
I will not, however, play the nag and beg you to return. You have chosen this path. Judging from your words, you have done so after peering honestly into the mirror of your soul.
I have done the same. That is all that can be asked of either of us. Yes, God forgives, but do not test Him. There is no greater sin.
I will pray for you.
Oh, if only we could have found a way.
Love,
Mattie
CHAPTER 43
A dry night wind scraped dust off the desert floor, peppering Lisa’s eyes, parching her throat. She tried to swallow regardless, a reflex from fear as much as thirst.
The high ragged scarp of the Dragoons lay faintly visible in the distance, like a giant wall of shadow beneath an infinite mist of stars. No moon as yet. Coy moon. Shy moon.
She felt especially small, an afterthought in the universe—tottering a bit in her tasteful pumps, still dressed in the slimming black suit she’d worn to court, though the tails of her blouse had worked free from the waistband of her skirt.
Hard to keep prim and tidy when men grab you, blast you with a snakebite of paralyzing current, shove you into the back of their big black shiny SUV.
She’d broken free just a moment ago, here in front of the mansion in the desert where they’d brought her—Littmann’s place, presumably. He was crouching somewhere nearby, along with Rankin, the two bodyguards, and maybe a dozen other losers.
Check that: heavily armed losers. Good old boys with guns, rabble for rent, terms negotiable, apply within.
Apparently, they’d intended to use her as bait, a hostage. Comical notion—who of sound mind and clarity of purpose uses a lawyer as a bargaining chip?
She’d shaken off the judge’s hold as he and everybody else hit the deck to avoid a sudden laser-strike of incoming fire, shattering a nearby windshield, leaving behind the telltale spider web in the glass. Then she simply started to walk, daring Littmann and his roughnecks to follow her up the long gravel drive, drag her back. Or just shoot her.
Glancing up through the dark at the distant mesa again, she noticed flickering lights along the ridge, about 100 yards apart. It conjured something, a memory, a thought—first the image of Elan Wingfield, standing beside her outside court, then the echo of his words: Gideon, the Mannaseh, the Midianites, the coveted central highlands of Canaan… That was it: the 300 warriors hand-picked by Yahweh for battle. They’d stood along the hill crests encircling the enemy
camp, then broke open their clay lamps, blew their terrible trumpets, seeming like a multitude ten times their real number, an army of specters, horrible ghosts, striking terror into the enemy.
I’ve stepped into the Bible, she thought. The Parable of the O.K. Corral. Her foot brushed something fleshy—she jumped, thinking: snake!
Almost instantly, she broke into helpless laughter. How utterly, cosmically beside the point, fearing a rattler with a dozen or more misfits with guns behind you, taking cover behind their big-wheeled vehicles, while another gunman, a sniper, one of Rayella’s marines no doubt, hides somewhere in the large dark house a couple hundred yards straight ahead.
No one terribly invested in sparing your life—al contrario, piccola querida—just about everybody pretty much okay with you dead.
Another glance up—so many stars, like brushwork across the trance-inducing emptiness. Was it really so wrong to wonder if all that lovely light, shimmering in her eyes, didn’t somehow bounce back across the nothingness, a message: Hello. My name is Lisa. I’m a double Scorpio, I love to sleep in on Sundays…
She realized, finally, what she’d nearly tripped over: a body. Glancing around, she made out two more similar shapes in the dark. Three men dead, or dying, cut down by the invisible shooter. Who no doubt has me in his sights now too, she thought, some kind of night vision scope on his rifle. A killer’s killer.
She resumed walking toward the house—Hell, why not? Apply within. Better the murderer you don’t know, she supposed, than the ones you do.
The egg-sized gravel made each step unsteady so she took off her shoes, gripping one in each hand. A hint of the day’s sunlight lingered in the smooth round stones, a few degrees warmer than the air, a strange but welcome touch of comfort against the tender flesh of her bare feet.
Go ahead and shoot, she thought. Front, back, somebody, anybody. Be my guest. Kill the afterthought.
CHAPTER 44
In the hours between Wander’s stabbing and nightfall, Rags had felt the stranglehold tighten, then stop, as though whoever it was out there intended merely to toy with them, pin them down, maybe nick or even cripple but not kill. Not yet.
Maybe reinforcements were on the way, cowboy killers to the rescue, and that relief squad would be the outfit to finish the job, claim the victory, saw off scalps.
Either way, whatever chance remained for escape lay with darkness, and Rags knew from hard experience that night’s principal advantage lay in surprise. Otherwise, its capacity for adrenalin mania, stumbling confusion, and outright chaos outweighed all other factors.
Unfortunately, surprise required a sharp, steady, active wakefulness, and whether from weariness or the tick-tock of uncertainty or sheer raw despair he couldn’t quite tell, but every idea or hint of a plan that came to him whisked away like windblown dust before he could bring it to bear.
***
Here’s how it had gone.
First, the sniper on the ridge proved eerily accurate despite his perch lying almost a click away. The faceless sharpshooter—probably a hunter like Chalky, born to his skill then drilled to perfection, military most likely, maybe SWAT—finally drove BBK off the roof with a shot that chipped off a thousand razor-like shards from the chimney a mere inch or so overhead.
Momentarily blinded, his face cut up like he’d been clawed by a feral cat, the big man scurried across the tarpaper daring his nemesis to take his kill shot, dodged a giddy-up round as he scrambled over the edge and dropped down into a twiggy bed of verbena, then took up position in the garden, belly-crawling along the dense wall of Indian laurels until he got into position, doing so behind the massive sandstone pedestal of a birdbath the size of a satellite dish.
From there, pointing the barrel of his Belgian weapon through the hedge down-range across the wide bajada with its carpet of chuparosa and brittlebush, he made sure no one made a move on the house from the rear.
***
For most of the afternoon, Chalky served the same role in front as BBK at the back, though the two traded off now and then to stay frosty. He’d fashioned himself a decent hide by covering himself in an off-white bedsheet a slight shade lighter than the pillar he curled around, then chambered a round into his M40A5 with its customized trigger, its Schmidt Bender scope, and traded the occasional potshot with the posse stationed at the gate, letting them know: You move, you pay.
Every half hour or so, he scrambled back inside to check on Wander—clean the wound, change the dressing.
Having lost more than a pint of blood, Wander had semi-stabilized in a ghost land between consciousness and delirium, thrashing at an unseen enemy from time to time, licking his lips, asking for water only seconds after his most recent drink.
Twice he opened his eyes, stared straight at Chalky, and muttered both times, word for word, like he’d been practicing it over and over in his mind, “Don’t let me down, brother. Make sure it’s you, not them. You know what I’m saying.”
After the second round of that, Chalky, hands and cammies streaked with dried blood, told Rags, “He’ll last a couple hours at most, we don’t get him to an ER.”
And who goes in to make sure he doesn’t just lie there and die on his gurney, Rags wondered—which one of us stays and risks arrest for the four men dead already, who knows how many to come? Who explains to the intake nurse what happened? It has to be me, he thought. That’s an order, no volunteers.
And yet he also knew Rayella would never let him stay behind alone. After all this so far? She’d dig in her heels, stick by his side, stubborn and loyal, and that just wasn’t fair. He couldn’t let her take the fall like that.
But he also couldn’t just let Wander die.
Figure it out when you get there, he decided, then went to the back door, whistled BBK in from the garden. Once the group was assembled he told them all to pack up, it was finally time to make a break for Tuck’s rental car parked out front. If that worked out, they’d see if they could slip past the sniper, dodge his shots, and outrun the posse that would no doubt follow as they made a run for the Middle Pass.
They lifted Wander to his feet, limp arm hooked around Chalky’s shoulder, bloody washcloth duct-taped to his neck, the skin that sickly evil gray. Rayella clutched her satchel of letters. Rags and BBK got ready to lay down cover fire for the others when, after a count of three, they’d race out the door and down the steps and hustle into the car.
This was a little after four or so, about an hour and a half before sunset.
Maybe the time had nothing to do with it. Maybe the gunmen at the gate, somewhere between two and three hundred yards away, were simply watching, waiting, ready to fire in the blink of an eye should a door fly open.
Regardless, Rags and BBK made it out to the pillars okay, but no one else got the chance to take so much as that first bold step onto the porch before a barrage of gunfire peppered the entire front of the house, like a giant had spat out a truckload of nails. None of this bunch of gunmen seemed to possess the skill of the man on the ridge, but the fusillade still drove everybody back inside.
That accomplished, the shooters apparently felt inspired and turned their freshly aggravated hive mind to the car. Within a matter of seconds, they blasted out two tires, made short work of the windshield, and riddled the rest of the thing with what seemed like a thousand rounds, leaving it a perforated hulk, listing to one side and barely fit for scrap.
Why they hadn’t thought of that before, God only knew. Maybe they’d been waiting all along for the chance to spring that little trap. Maybe they just snapped awake and opened fire.
Suddenly Tuck was there, easing forward from the back. He’d been sitting alone in the living room last time Rags checked, head in his hands, trying to come up with his own plan out of here no doubt, him and his haywire love from Way Back When. Inching past the others, trying to hide the drag in his bad leg, then peering out the beveled edge of the vestibule window, he remarked with that irritating air of smugness, “I told you those boys would kno
w their business.”
Rags snapped. On his feet in an eye-blink, grabbing the man’s shirt in his fist, he backed him hard against the wall. If anyone here deserves, really truly deserves to die, he thought. Shaking off the impulse, he pointed through the window’s frosted glass toward the blurred outline of the massive, four-door garage maybe fifty yards away, a third of the distance between the house and the empty stables. It had seemed irrelevant earlier. Not so, now.
“How many cars they keep out there?”
“The Littmanns?”
Rayella barked, “Who the fuck else would he mean, genius?”
Tuck closed one eye, the better to see through the prism of clear glass along the window’s edge, studied the low-slung structure—white clapboard, pitched roof, big as a VFW hall with thick, wavy glass brick windows, impossible to see through.
“Can’t tell if any cars are in there.”
“Find out,” Rags said. “If so, get the keys.”
“Not to be overly negative here,” Tuck said, “but which one of us is spry enough to hoof across that open ground without getting mowed down for the privilege?”
Rags said, “Just come back with the keys.”
***
Tuck found Meredith sitting at the dining room table, staring at the body of the youngster, the one named Seth. She’d winnowed the hair away from her face, braiding it absently, and a coiled strand lay loose to one side, perched in the freckled crook of her neck.
The bodies of the other three guards, still bound hand and foot, eyes fixed in their distant death stares, lay not far away in surprisingly minimal pools of blood, meaning they’d passed on quick. Give Rags that, Tuck thought. He’s a capable killer.
The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday Page 23