by Oliver Atlas
We have only a few seconds. Do we shoot it out or do we—
“Yarely, get in the back of the wagon.”
“But Blake, what if—”
“Now!” I yell, thrusting my rifle into his hands. “Keep a steady fire on them. And keep the medicine as safe as you can. We’re going for a ride. Go!”
The instant Yarely starts climbing the side of the wagon, I draw my revolver and jump for the driver’s seat, firing to the north as I do. The four riders scatter, firing back, although for the moment they’re caught off-guard and their shots are more at the sky than at me. I catch the wagon’s team off-guard too, cracking the reigns and hollering for an all-out sprint. The team probably hasn’t run in years, but between my yelling and the angry gunfire, the old mares are soon ratcheted up into a haphazard gallop.
Dirt-face and his three friends swoop onto the road behind us, ducking Yarely’s admittedly poor shooting and firing back with poor shooting of their own. No wonder they planned to hang me. The riders to the south, in the meanwhile, have taken a bee line to cut us off to the west. They’re not shooting yet. They don’t need to. They’re still out of pistol range. I made a mistake giving Yarely the rifle. Still, if he could manage to down the men behind us, we’d have a chance.
“Yarely!” I yell over my shoulder. “Yarely, you’ve got to switch with me. Yarely!”
I glance back. The little man is slumped along the back of the wagon. He’s clutching—what else?—his shoulder. We meet eyes and I know he’s not going to be leaping into the driver’s seat anytime soon. Okay. So much for plan A. Now I start wishing I had a plan B.
I reign in the wagon’s team, which gladly brakes. The mares are snorting and wheezing, neighing to one another in complaint. Even though I’m about to be shot or hanged or tarred-and-feathered or flayed, I feel an odd sense of pride in having made a run for it. What I want now is to negotiate for Yarely’s life, and, roundabout, for Kaite’s.
I can already hear the men behind us laughing.
I can already hear dirt-face singing under his breath in mocking falsetto.
“Hanged, hung, hanged, hung—we gonna end what we begun.”
Chapter Nineteen
The Banshee
It’s a very clever song, and I say so. In thanks, two of the men wrench my arms behind my back while a third cinches a noose of thick rope around my neck. So much for negotiation. Yarely’s still in the back of the wagon. He still has my rifle and his shotgun. But apparently he’s either already dead, next to dead, or figures we’ve already lost.
Dirt-face stays on his ride, a little brown and black splotched quarter horse. He grins at me, smug and malevolent all at once. His falsetto song has dipped now. It’s barely more than a whisper.
“Hanged, hung, hanged, hung—we gonna end what we begun.”
Dirt-face holds out a hand. He wants the rope, and I can guess why. He means to drag me.
The nearest tree is fifty yards away. Thankfully, the terrain doesn’t look so bad, some sharp rocks here and there, but no creeks to drown in or boulders to brain myself on. The gang’s southern contingent has caught up, so by the time I’m snaking through the dirt, I have a full entourage there to block out the sun and to guffaw and spit on me. To keep from strangling, I have to grab the rope above my head, keeping a tiny bit of slack in it. I tense my stomach muscles fiercely, trying to keep loose rocks from crushing a kidney or puncturing a lung. My arms and chest are soon on fire, the one from strain, the other from battering. I imagine the skin on my torso is ready to slough off, red and raw. I try thrusting up with my knees to take some pressure off, but a rock slices into my right thigh and my leg goes numb. I flop back onto my stomach. Okay. Numb feels good.
After an eternity, I’m on my back, staring up at a big scrub oak. One of the Rubies is standing on her saddle, throwing the end of my rope over a sturdy branch ten feet off the ground. When she has, she passes the end onward, probably to Dirt-face. I’m sure he wants to tie it to his saddle horn and haul me up. They’re not even going to tie my hands. I’ll pull and climb and try to fight. They’ll laugh and prod. When I start to fumble and flail, they might even start shooting at my feet. They want me to suffer. What’s more, they want me to know how much they want me to suffer. They want me to feel their hate. Wicked minds may be cunning, but in the end they’re too predictable: I know what’s going to happen.
And then it’s happening.
I’m being dragged up, onto my knees. I’m gagging, fighting. My palms are already bleeding, slipping on the rope. My chest explodes and I don’t know if it’s from relief that all the pressure is now on my neck or from a final surge of adrenaline. All of my strength goes to keep an inch of slack in the rope. Another second. Another half-second. Who knows what it’s worth. Maybe all the entertainment is engrossing enough that Yarely will be able to slip away. Come on, Yarely. If you never try, you’ll never know. Hanged, hung, hanged, hung—we gonna end what we begun. I wonder where Milly is. I wonder if she’s faring any better. And why is she so beautiful? And really—why doesn’t she care more about desire? Desire desire desire. Dire. Ire. Sire. Why don’t I care more? Why is the day so hot? So, so hot for September. I’m so thirsty. I wonder if some zombie will come and eat what’s left of me after the wolves reach what they can. I wonder if zombies get thirsty.
I think maybe Dirt-face is lecturing me. It must be the obligatory victor’s soliloquy required of all villains. A voice—I think it’s his—is droning on about how they’ll have to chop my head off because I might be a something in league with a somebody. And Yarely. A ‘runt coachman.’ They plan on taking him back somewhere to stand trial for something. But what about the medicine? What about Kaite? Her baby? What about Casey? And Astrid? Milly? Jenny? They all need the medicine.
I try to grind out the word—medicine—but it’s impossible, like swallowing through your eyes. Someone must notice because the constant din of laughter swells.
And then thunder.
The hot afternoon suddenly cracks with a hideous cry—part howl, part screech, part cackle. The noise rips out from every direction at once. Is that me? Is that how a death rattle sounds in the dying person’s own ears? The cry grabs the air by the throat and stretches on for a six count, and then dies.
For a second, there is complete silence. My tormentors—me—we’re all captivated, unified for that one moment.
The Banshee.
The name is on a dozen terrified lips.
If the sound wasn’t my death rattle, that’s what it must have been: the Banshee’s call. That’s all it could be.
Even though my hands are now slipping and the slack in the rope is almost completely gone—even though my tongue is curling back into my throat and the tendons in my neck are about to snap, my life does not flash before my eyes. Instead, rather anticlimactically, a front-page blurb from yesterday’s New Pokian does:
Thirteen law enforcement officers deputized by the Territory to enforce poaching laws were found dead yesterday on a back road five miles southwest of New Pokey. Witnesses from a nearby salt quarry said they heard gunfire just after sunrise.
“I heard shots,” reported Hugh McMorfle, the mine’s chief foreman. “One-two-three-four—real quick like. Then shots started spitting out like mad. Then things went quiet for a minute, until—BAM!—a single shot. Then another minute of quiet, until—BAM!—a single shot.”
Mr. McMorfle reports that those single shots continued until they added to nine. Along with the first four shots, that made for thirteen: thirteen shots for thirteen honorable peacekeepers. After examining the bodies, County Coroner Norman Normal testified that each deputy died from a single shot in the back, to the heart. According to New Pokey Sheriff , Dani Donner, this pattern of death is consistent with the recent massacres connected with the activities of the criminal known as the Banshee. “The so-called Banshee,” Sheriff Donner said in a public statement this morning, “is nothing more than a pathetic psychopath with a vendetta against law and o
rder in Oregon. Until now, we have employed steam-tech ways of dealing with the problem. Given the tragic scope of this last massacre, I am confident we will receive full authority to operate by whatever means will put a quick end to these evils.
I wonder if my killers read the article too.
Regardless, they don’t hesitate. I hear a collective curse, guns sliding from holsters, horse hooves pounding away in a dozen directions. A shot rings out and I’m suddenly jangling on the rope. Another shot and I’m falling, crumpling into a patch of sweet soft weeds. I roll onto my back. It’s such a beautiful day. A few big white clouds are rolling overhead. A red-tailed hawk is practicing its Yeats.
Gyre. Gyre. Widening gyre.
I’m falling apart.
Another five shots cough out. Then the shots come at random from farther and farther away, from wildly different directions. North, southwest. East, northwest. Northeast, west, southeast, north. I forgot to count. Do I still know how to count?
Count?
Count?
The word feels funny. The word makes no sense.
The word?
The Word?
I close my eyes.
Ah. Darkness.
Darkness makes sense . . .
. . . it makes more sense than ever.
Chapter Twenty
A Pale Rider
The tree . . . the broken rope . . . the blue sky . . . creaking wheels.
The wagon.
Yarely.
The little man is falling onto me with a groan. He is struggling to haul me to the wagon. He is bleeding. Half his shirt is dark with blood. Stop, Yarely, stop. The words catch like razors in my throat. All that comes out instead is a crackly hiss. Can a larynx shatter? I hope not, but that’s what the sound makes me wonder.
Yarely grunts and tugs, dragging me by a boot. My boot slips off and he tumbles onto his back with a thud. For a time, nothing happens. Clouds pass. I wonder if Yarely’s dead. I wonder if I’m dead too. No. My hands can still move. My arms too. I try to sit up but a pain lances through my hip and leg.
Then Yarely is beside me, crawling. “Th-th-the B-b-b-b . . . ”
I can’t tell if he’s stuttering from shock and loss of blood or fear. His eyes glance south, back toward the road. My head won’t turn that far. He sees me trying, though, and gives me a push, spinning my body forty-five degrees.
I see nothing. The road. The pylons. Two zombies a quarter mile to the south, trudging toward us. The bodies of three Rubies, lying dead nearby. And then . . .
That’s odd. There’s suddenly a rider coming out of the shimmer of afternoon heat on the road. He wasn’t there, but now he is. He wears black, all black, from hat to boots. And he is riding a pale horse. I must still be half-unconscious, because the stallion seems too tall, its legs and neck stretched unnaturally, its color too unreal, a faded yellow tinged with light green, the hue of dying leaves.
Now I know what Yarely was stuttering about.
The Banshee.
My lips must move with the ominous name because Yarely nods frantically.
I concentrate as hard as I know how, willing my throat to open and my tongue to move. “Shhh . . . shhh . . . ” Yarely nods in agreement as though I’m calling for silence, but I’m not. I’m trying to say, “Shhh . . . should I . . . shhh . . . shoot him . . . in the shoulder?”
Yarely’s eyes glimmer at the joke. I like this man, my brother’s friend. He came back for me. He’s staying with me. He’s even brave enough to share my morbid humor when we’re about to be gunned down. All I know is that I’d rather die at the hands of the Banshee than some banal crook like Dirt-face. Still, there’s Kaite’s medicine to think about. I can’t just give up.
Wincing, I reach for my right hip. The Ranger’s pistol is gone. Of course it’s gone. One of the thugs took it off me back at the wagon. “Yarely,” I wheeze through the broken pipe that’s become my throat. “Please . . . fetch me the rifle.”
Yarely hesitates. The Banshee is near, maybe not quite in easy pistol range, but certainly in range for any sort of a master marksman. I could hit us from there, which means the Banshee probably can too. But what else can we do? Hope for the merciful goodwill of a known mass murderer? Dear Mr. Banshee, please spare us so we can deliver medicine to my pregnant sister-in-law? Nope. “Yarely,” I growl. “Get me that gun.”
The little man meets my gaze and obeys. He stumbles to the wagon and back and sets the rifle beside my reclining body. Now it’s my turn. Yarely obeyed me. Now I have to obey me. Bracing myself with clenched teeth and locked muscles, I try to sit up. The pain in my hip leaps to my chest and I gasp. I manage to get the back of my head no more than two inches off the ground before it falls back. I try again. Four inches. More pain. “Yarely,” I grit. “Help me.”
By now the grim rider is near, his otherworldly mount approaching at the slowest beat. I can see the rider’s face: black skin with noble features, a strong cleft chin, sharp cheeks, with wide set, inexplicably dark blue eyes. He appears to have no hair on his head or face. His expression is open and empty, the look of a master gambler, a falcon, a killer without guile—a killer without remorse.
With Yarely’s awkward, one-armed help, I push myself into a sitting position. Hiding the effort and agony it requires, I lift the .32 level with the man’s chest. He reigns in his horse and stares. His big, slender hands fold together in his lap, uncomfortably near the pearl-handled pistols he wears on each hip.
“Well?” he says. His voice is a gentle boom.
“Well?” I repeat dumbly, caught off guard to be thrown an opening question and not a finishing bullet. “Well . . . thank you.”
The man nods with formal dignity, as though my reason for thanking him is clear, even though I’m not sure why I thanked him. Was it for saving our tails from the Rubies or for not yet shooting us himself? A faint smile plays over the rider’s lips. “Do you know who I am?”
“Not really.”
The rider’s smile broadens. “Not presumptuous, eh? That’s good. I don’t care that much for presumptuous people.”
We face each other for an awkward span before I have to ask, “Are we free to go?”
“Of course,” he says, sweeping a hand westward, toward the late afternoon sun. “Why wouldn’t you be?”
Something in his tone snags at my chest, some razor’s hint of insinuation. His question isn’t rhetorical. Why am I not free to go west? Because of Milly. Because of Jenny. Because I’ve been in the Territory three days and I’ve already managed to let my heart become divided. I’m suddenly flooded with all the doubt and guilt I’ve been pushing down. Now free of the calming hum of the pylons, I feel a flare of anger—blind, raw anger. It lasts only for a moment, but during that moment I’m furious that life would ever put me in such a predicament.
As though he’s reading my mind, the rider nods again. “You asked if you’re free to go.” He rubs the mustard neck of his unmoving steed. “But have you ever considered the word, freedom? A terrible, beautiful word. Free and doom, fused together.”
He lets the question stand, as though I may really respond. I’ve never thought about the word. I’ve only ever felt it. Everybody knows what freedom means . . . don’t they?
“To be free is to be doomed,” the rider continues. “Or put it this way: to be free means you are doomed. Doomed to choose. So, again—yes, you are free to go. The more important question, though, is which way will you go?”
I cock my head, bemused. This is not the kind of exchange I imagined having with the Banshee. “Who are you?”
The man’s dignified smile now touches his eyes. “Just another one of Oregon’s hungry ghosts.”
Yarely yelps, his finger suddenly up and pointing. Something has dawned on him. “Y-y-you’re L-l-la . . . L-l-la . . . ”
But whatever it is won’t come out. The little bearded man might as well be singing his do-re-mi’s.
The big rider’s smile fades and a dangerous light leaps into his cobalt blu
e eyes. “That’s right,” he says in his smooth rumble. “I used to be known as Lancaster. Lancaster Moon.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Free Doom
Yarely drops to a knee beside me. “W-w-well, I’ll be a prince and a p-pauper,” he breathes. “L-l-lancaster Moon. But you’re . . . you’re . . . ”
“Dead,” I say, finishing Yarely’s sentence for him. “Even in Texas, the newspapers showed the burial of your remains. That must have been ten years ago.”
“Nine,” glowers the rider. “It will be nine years next month.”
“The Duchess,” I murmur, remembering the stories about how it took forty of her men, an ambush of hell-hounds, and a dynamited gorge to bring down the famous Ranger.
Moon snorts and shakes his head. “A pile of lies. None of that happened. East and South were with me on a mission to meet an ODOZ bigwig in Union Powder and escort him to Bentlam. One second I’m handling four Screamers, the next—BLAM BLAM—I’m down, shot in the back, and South is dragging me. ‘Sorry, Lannie,’ he says as he tosses me into a ditch full of chum. ‘We’ll look after your things.’”
By the deadly calm in Moon’s tone, I get the feeling South’s promise was really a terrible threat, and the ‘things’ he mentioned meant far more than Moon’s badge or gun. There’s a raw pain in the big man’s eyes and I know better than to press him on the matter. “But you obviously lived,” I say.
“No.” Lancaster Moon cracks his knuckles. “I died.”
Right. I’m beginning to think the man sitting before us is crazy after all. “Then . . . how are you alive now?”
“That doesn’t matter.” Moon absently rubs the nose of his pale horse. Its coat shimmers with reflected heat and I suddenly wish autumn’s cool would come in earnest. “It’s best if you don’t know much for now. But what you do need to know is that Hinton Maplenut wants your friend dead.”