by Jory Sherman
“That bear came out of nowhere,” John said as the two men started walking across the plain toward the new log house. Juanito lit another cigarette. John heard the match strike and turned to him.
“Why don’t you wear a sign, Juanito?”
“A sign?”
“Yeah. One that says ‘Shoot me.’ You can see the glow of that quirly for ten miles up here.”
“Todo el mundo duermen,” Juanito said.
“Yeah, everybody’s asleep. Not everybody.”
John and Ben reached the unfinished structure. Manolo was just inside, by the open door, a rifle in his hands.
“Manolo,” John said. “How’s my horse?”
Before the man could answer, John heard Gent snuffle and whicker softly through his nostrils. John stepped inside, into soft moonglow and fading starlight. Gent trotted over to him and whickered again.
“I feed him the oats and the corn,” Manolo said. “He eat good. Drink, too.”
John rubbed the gelding’s neck. Gent bowed it even more and John rubbed his topknot.
“Sorry, boy,” he said. “But you outran that bear.”
He walked around to look at the clawed rump, and Gent sidled away, swinging his rear.
“I’m just going to look, Gent. I won’t touch.”
The horse smelled of alcohol, liniment, and salve. The scars were covered over with a creamy substance.
“He ain’t limpin’ no more, I see,” Ben said.
“That’s a good sign,” John said.
“You can ride him inside of a week, maybe.”
“I’ll walk until he’s well,” John said.
He and Ben stepped outside into the dawn.
“You keep an eye on him, Manolo,” John said.
John looked up toward Emma’s cabin. He saw the orange glow of Juanito’s cigarette, no other signs of life. The sky was paling fast and the eastern horizon was a smear of blood-red clouds and the blazing tip of the sun.
Before Manolo could answer, a rifle shot rang out, echoing down the valley and up into the hills.
The glowing cigarette spun out of Juanito’s hand and cartwheeled to the ground, striking in a shower of sparks. Juanito toppled over.
John went into a fighting crouch, his survival instinct rising to the surface.
Then he saw shadowy riders appear out of the trees, a line of them, each at least one hundred yards apart. They swung down on the encampment firing their rifles, piercing the gloom with flashes of orange light. Bullets thudded into the chuck wagon and one of the supply wagons. Men, roused from their sleep, stumbled out into the open, swinging rifles, tracking down fast-moving targets on horseback.
“Take cover, Manolo,” John shouted, pushing Ben out of the way. He started toward the nearest rider, still in a crouch.
“And shoot to kill,” he said, drawing his pistol.
“Hey, wait for me,” Ben said, drawing his own weapon.
But John did not wait. He broke into a run, his head throbbing with shoots of pain, rifles cracking like bullwhips, bullets whining in the air like angry hornets.
One of the riders streaked toward him, his horse’s tail streaming like a dark battle flag. Men cursed and yelled, and John heard a woman’s terrified scream that chilled his blood.
He stopped, hunkered down in a fighting stance, and cocked his pistol, held it steady. He held his breath. When the rider was within twenty feet, the man raised his rifle and aimed it straight at John.
Ben called out a warning.
John led the rider, swinging his pistol from slightly behind the man. As the rider aimed his Henry, John saw him disappear over his sights and squeezed the trigger. White smoke billowed from his pistol in a blinding cloud.
He heard his bullet hit home and when he stepped through the smoke, he saw the rider down, his horse galloping away as if it had been snakebit.
John heard another horse galloping toward him from another direction.
Ben shot the horse out from under the rider. Manolo was firing his rifle from the doorway. Bullets whistled overhead from several directions.
John’s head thundered with pain as if a hundred kettle drums sounded in his brain.
The man Ben had unseated was not dead. He stood up, his rifle gone, and drew his pistol, aimed at Ben. Fired.
Ben cried out and went down, blood spurting from his left calf.
“Hold it right there, Savage,” the man said, and John recognized his voice.
It was Krieger, and John heard the sound of the man’s pistol as he cocked it.
TIME STOPPED FOR JOHN IN THAT MOMENT, STOPPED DEAD IN its tracks, as the rim of the sun crept up above the horizon like the angry eye of a god bent on laying waste to all mankind.
34
JOHN SQUEEZED THE TRIGGER BEFORE KRIEGER COULD FIRE HIS pistol.
The bullet caught him just above the belt buckle. He doubled over in pain, tried to lift his pistol to aim at John, but couldn’t raise his arm high enough. He dropped to his knees as John stepped up to him.
“You bastard,” Krieger snarled, his flat lips baring his teeth.
John looked down at him.
“That bullet was Fate, Krieger. The next one is Destiny.”
Krieger dropped his pistol in surrender.
“You—you wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man, would you, Savage? And I’m hurt bad.”
“The hell I wouldn’t,” John said as he put the muzzle of his pistol tight against Krieger’s forehead and squeezed the trigger.
Krieger dropped like a sash weight, his eyes wide in disbelief, already glazing over with the frost of death.
John wheeled and went to Ben, who was sitting down, holding on to his bloody leg.
“You all right, partner?” John said, kneeling down beside him.
“Yeah. The lead gouged out some meat, but didn’t break no bone.”
“You sit tight,” John said, and stood up, racing toward the cabin.
His men were firing rifles and pistols from beneath wagons. Dobbins had two pistols in his hand.
Men fell from horseback, screamed in pain.
One stood up, drew his pistol, aimed it at John.
“You must be Thatcher,” John called out.
“How’d you know?” Thatcher said.
“Because you look like the dumbest bastard in the world right now.”
“I’ll kill you,” Thatcher said, gritting his teeth, his face squinching in rage.
John didn’t even aim. He shot from the hip and the bullet ripped out Thatcher’s throat. He gurgled on the blood and pitched forward like a drunk, staggered a step or two, and then crashed to the ground.
“By the gods, you got the last ’un,” Dobbins hollered, and danced toward John. “I got me one, too, and I think Carlos got another.”
John looked around. There were at least two dead horses, and men sprawled on the ground like sleepers reaching for something just beyond their grasps.
There was a commotion in the trees behind the cabin. A horse ran out of the trees.
John recognized it as one of his packhorses.
“What the hell?” he said as he began reloading his pistol.
“They was another shooter what rode up and rode back there,” Dobbins said. “It looked like that Blanchett kid.”
Emma, stepping from the cabin, heard his words.
“What did you say, Ornery? You saw my son Whit?”
“Yes’m, it sure looked like your boy.”
“It couldn’t be,” Emma said.
Then Eva appeared behind her mother.
“He took Pa’s rifle, Ma,” she said. “When he ran off.”
“I know that, but Whit’s not an outlaw like these awful men.”
The sun cleared the horizon and the morning sky was a raging scarlet, its fingers stretching across the plateau, lighting up the cattle and the grasses.
John started walking toward the spot where the horse had galloped out of the timber. Dobbins walked beside him, both pistols dangling from his h
ands. Emma and Eva traipsed after them, both still in their nightgowns and bare-footed, hopping as if they were walking on hot coals.
Whit Blanchett was hanging from a pine limb, his head cocked to one side, his young face turning dark brown, his body a sagging weight slowly swinging in the morning breeze.
Emma screamed and collapsed. Eva caught her, held her up.
“Kid hanged himself,” Dobbins muttered to himself. “I wonder why.”
John took Emma in his arms, patted the back of her head.
“Why did he kill himself, John?” Eva said, tears eking from her eyes, streaming down her face.
“I reckon that boy just inherited too much from his pa’s side of the family,” he said.
Emma fainted, and John picked her up in his arms.
“You need some smellin’ salts, John?” Dobbins asked. “I got some in the chuck wagon.”
“Yeah, Ornery, we might need some. Bring it to the house.”
As Dobbins started for the chuck wagon, John reached out with one hand, caught his sleeve.
“Say, Ornery,” he said, “what’s your real first name? I know it isn’t Ornery.”
“No, it ain’t. I was borned in N’Orleans. Me father was Irish and me mither was French. You can guess the moniker they tacked on to me, can’t ye?”
“Honoré?” John said.
“I’ll get the smellin’ salts,” Dobbins said, and galloped off like an oversized leprechaun.
“John,” Eva said as they reached the cabin, “is it all over? The killing?”
He stopped just before entering though the doorway and looked down at Eva.
“Is it ever over, Eva? There was no reason for any of this.”
“Why, John, why?”
He entered the cabin, carried Emma to her bed. She moaned.
“Are you going to answer my question?” Eva said as she sat beside her mother and caressed her face with one delicate hand.
“Why, Eva? I’d say the reason is pure and simple. Greed. That’s behind most of the West’s troubles. Maybe the world’s. Men want things they don’t have and don’t deserve. They think they can take it from weaker men. And women.”
“It’s all so senseless,” Eva said.
John didn’t answer.
It was senseless.
And it was going to rain soon and the grass would grow, the cattle would feed, men would be buried, others would heal and go on living. And the mountains would stay the same, old and wise and bigger than anything man could build or steal. That was the way it would be. The way it would always be.
