He paused to compose himself outside Mackey’s compartment. It was easy to spot the compartment. It was the only one whose door was still closed.
He rested a trembling hand on the door. “Behold the future, Mr. Bishop!”
He tried to pull the door aside but found it locked.
Bishop smiled. “The future seems barred to you, Mr. Rigg.”
“That’s Colonel Rigg to you!” Anxious to see the bodies, Rigg drew his Colt and put a bullet through the lock. He slid the door open with his free hand.
Inside, he saw his best operative, Charlie Gates, lying on the floor, propped up beneath the window. His eyes bulged from their sockets. His skin was blue. His black tongue hung loose from his gaping mouth.
And his scalp was gone.
It took Rigg a few moments to notice something had been written on the corpse’s white shirt. Something written in the dead man’s blood.
I’M COMING.
Bishop laughed as he patted the stunned Rigg on the shoulder. “From where I stand, Colonel Rigg, the future looks awful bright, indeed.”
Rigg would have shot the banker in the back as he walked away, had he been able to take his eyes from the scalped man in the train compartment.
And the bloody words written on the dead man’s shirt.
I’M COMING.
CHAPTER 29
Mackey and Billy had left the train at Chidester and sent the telegram from there. Now they made their way through the mountain pass where the Blackfoot tribe had once lived. It was almost nightfall by then, and Mackey knew they would need to make camp before they headed into Dover Station the next day.
Billy once again broke the silence that had fallen over them. “You think Wolf Child still lives around here?”
“If he’s still alive,” Mackey said, “then he still lives here. He bled for this land. He won’t give it up so easy.”
Billy pointed at the scalp hanging from a string on Mackey’s pommel. “You going to get rid of that thing? It’s likely to give Wolf Child the wrong impression if he sees it.”
Mackey had forgotten it was there until Billy mentioned it. “If anyone could understand why it’s there, it’s Wolf Child. Why do you want me to get rid of it?”
“It’s grisly.”
“It sets a tone,” Mackey told him. “Besides, since when have you been bothered by a scalp? I recall a time when you had more hanging from your pommel than I did.”
“Those were Apache and Kiowa scalps,” Billy reminded him. “Different time and different reasons. We were different men, too, Aaron. We did all of that on Rigg’s orders.”
“We did it because it needed doing,” Mackey said. “Rigg just happened to give the order. Another officer might’ve done the same. Maybe even me.”
“Maybe,” Billy allowed, “but like I said. We’re different now. And you’re a better man than the kind who takes scalps.”
“Would be nice to think so,” Mackey said. “Wish it was true, but it’s not.”
Both men drew up short when they heard a crack off to the side of the trail. Someone else would have mistaken it for a snapping twig or a branch. Maybe a porcupine scurrying through the overgrowth.
But Mackey and Billy had both heard a hammer cock enough times to be able to tell the difference.
A man spoke to them in Siksika. “You used to be more careful, even for a white man.”
Mackey recognized the voice and responded in the same language. “We are not here to harm you, Wolf Child.”
“If I thought otherwise,” the man said, “you would not still be alive.”
The old Blackfoot chief stepped out from a stand of trees onto the narrow path. Had the light been better and if they had been paying more attention, Mackey knew they might have spotted the old man among the overgrowth. But in better conditions, Wolf Child would not have been standing there. He would have found another spot to greet his visitors.
“If you still remember where my village was,” Wolf Child said, “go there. I left some game in the woods I have to bring for supper. Unless you have become too important to eat with an old man, Máóhk Ki’sómma.”
The old man never had been able to say his name properly, even the rare times he had chosen to speak the Devil’s Tongue. “Wait and let us help you with the animal you killed.”
“Go to my village and wait,” Wolf Child said. “Accepting help from the white man only makes us weak.”
The old man disappeared back into the overgrowth.
Billy understood the language, but not well enough to speak it. “Still a nice old Blackfoot, isn’t he?”
“We’re off to a good start.” Mackey kept riding. “At least he didn’t shoot us.”
* * *
At the old Blackfoot camp, the three men ate venison and drank a pot of Billy’s coffee. People usually made a point of complimenting Billy on his coffee, but Wolf Child did not. If he liked it, he hid it well.
As they ate, Mackey spoke to the chief in his native tongue. “I did not think we would find anyone here.”
“Figured,” Wolf Child replied, “seeing as how you made enough noise for a deaf boy to follow. The vengeance trail has made you careless, Máóhk Ki’sómma.”
Mackey stopped eating. “How did you know?”
He gestured toward Adair, who joined Billy’s mount in eating the tall grass that had sprung up around the old village site. “The scalp you have dangling from your saddle tells me so. A man like you does not do something like that without purpose. That purpose for you would be a vengeance trail.”
“I told you to get rid of that thing,” Billy said from the other side of the fire.
Mackey went back to eating. “Never could get much past you, Wolf Child.”
“That is true.” The Blackfoot motioned to get Billy’s attention and spoke at him. “When his father first showed him this place, Máóhk Ki’sómma used to sneak out here at night and watch our customs and see our ways. He used to hide behind that large rock over there. All he would do is watch, but never approached the village. We came to call it Watching Rock for the young boy who looked at us.”
Mackey bit into another hunk of venison. “Didn’t know you knew about that.”
“A wise chief knows everything about his village. And all that is around it.” He regarded his own hunk of meat. “I was a good chief.”
Billy asked in English, “If you knew Mackey was there, why didn’t you invite him in?”
“Because it was not our place to invite him. Our village was always open to the people of his village. At least to those who came in peace. His father, Barking Dog, was always welcomed in our village and brought He Who Follows with him many times.”
Mackey almost spat out his food. He had forgotten the Blackfoot tribe used to call Pappy “Barking Dog” because his brogue sounded like a dog barking to them. Sim Halstead never had the heart to tell Pappy the truth, back when Sim still spoke, so he told Pappy it was their term for “Great Chief.”
Mackey smiled at the memory, but the smile did not last long. Both of them were gone now. Sim and Pappy. Taken from him from men not fit to empty their toilet water.
Mackey felt Wolf Child’s hand on his leg. “I know what happened to your father. I saw the flames from the high place and heard the screams of your people. A man leaving this place stopped to say goodbye to me and told me all that had happened in your village. I mourned your father. I mourn him still. He was a fine white man.”
“Yeah.” Mackey set his venison aside, suddenly losing his appetite. “He was.”
“And you have come this way to avenge him. You and the Dark One here.”
“Not just him,” Billy said in English, “but that’s part of it.”
Wolf Child set aside his own food on the blanket and grew quiet. When he felt he had been quiet enough, he said, “What you seek to do is a dangerous thing, Máóhk Ki’sómma. You already have a great blackness in you. This is clear. But the blackness can grow blacker still if you water it with blood
. You have killed white men and Apache and Comanche and Kiowa and Lakota. These were good things, because these are bad men who caused many of my people to fall under their blade. But what you seek to do now is different. What you seek to do now is for yourself, to stop your own pain. I fear what will happen to you when you find blood only makes the pain harder to cure.”
Mackey watched the fire dance. “I look forward to finding out.”
Wolf Child shook his head. “You may think the blackness inside you cannot grow any darker, but it can. I have seen it grow in good men, both white and red. I have seen how a spirit can be poisoned by the blackness, growing blacker until it no longer lives. I do not wish this for you, Máóhk Ki’sómma. Your father was a great man, and no great man wishes such a thing for his son.”
“The men we hunt have blackness of their own,” Mackey said. “A blackness that threatens my village and all of my people. Maybe even you, some day.”
The old man looked up at the stars high above the fire. It was a clear night, and there was much to see. “I am near a place where the blackness cannot follow me. It no longer holds any power over me. But both of you are young men. You have much time before you become as I am now. You have many things to see and do, for yourselves and your people. But you cannot do these things if your eyes are blinded by darkness, just as we could not see the sky if it was covered by clouds.”
Mackey looked to his left and saw a dead prickly bush with what appeared to be a pale rock beneath it.
But Mackey knew that was no rock. “And what do you say about your friend over there?”
Wolf Child pitched forward to see the place where Mackey was looking. “Ah, that is, as the white men say, my ‘chamber pot.’” He seemed pleased with himself to be able to pronounce English words so well. “That is my enemy. I remind him of his shame each morning when I make my water.”
Mackey knew that was the spot where the Blackfoot tribe had buried Darabont alive after he had turned the outlaw over to Wolf Child’s scouts. They had buried him up to his neck and poured honey over his head to attract the ants. Mackey had no idea how long it took for a man to die from something like that, but however long it had taken, it still was not long enough for Darabont.
“I used to make my droppings there, too, when my people moved on to another place. But the prickly bush grew and I could no longer do that.”
Billy had been able to follow the conversation well enough to say, “Sounds like a fitting end for him.”
“I will do it,” Wolf Child said, “as long as I can make water. When I die, I hope a skunk or a possum will do the same. Maybe a wolf, though that is too noble for him.”
“You have your chamber pot,” Mackey said. “I have my scalp and my vengeance. How are they different?”
“Because I knew when to stop.” Wolf Child looked at him for a long time. “Do you? Or will the blackness blind you until you have wandered too far within it to find your way out again? Until you cannot see the stars above or the good ground around you.”
The chief grabbed Mackey’s arm with a strong, bony hand. “The dead are lonely and beg us to follow them. Do not do this, Máóhk Ki’sómma. Not even for your father. Kill who you must, but not all, for all need not die to avenge him.”
For the first time since Billy had told him Pappy was dead, Mackey felt different. It was not peace. It was not comfort, just different.
It was why he said, “I’ll kill enough to end it once and for all.” He watched the fire dance among the logs. “As many as it takes, but no more than that.”
Wolf Child joined him in watching the fire. “I hope that number is small enough for you to escape the blackness.”
Billy sipped his coffee and watched the fire with them.
CHAPTER 30
By the time Billy and Mackey woke the next morning, Wolf Child was gone. There was no sight of the old chief, and neither Billy nor Mackey intended on looking for him. He had been roaming the plains and these hills for longer than either of them had been alive. If he had decided to leave, they knew it must have been for a good reason. Mackey knew better than to question a Blackfoot’s reason for doing anything.
But their conversation about the blackness had remained with Mackey throughout his sleep and had remained with him still now that he was awake. The talk had left an impression on him like a bruise, for the wisdom had come from within him, not from anything Wolf Child told him.
He imagined that was a gift of the wise, to be able to make other men better by leading them to their own conclusions. He had not shoved Mackey in the right direction. He had not even pointed it out. He had just kept talking until Mackey decided what he had to do.
The coals from the previous night’s fire were still hot enough to warm up the coffeepot. Since neither he nor Billy was hungry, they simply finished their coffee, packed up, and rode out toward Dover Station.
Neither man had spoken a word, either, until Billy once again broke the silence. “Mind telling me what you’ve got in mind? I’d kind of like to know before we get there.”
Mackey realized he had not been very talkative since leaving Helena. He had not told Billy much of anything that was on his mind the whole way to Dover Station.
They had ridden together for so long, he always imagined his deputy knew what he was thinking. But this time was different. Everything was different about this.
“We’re going to do what we were trained to do,” Mackey said. “Observe, plan, and attack.”
“I figured that,” Billy said. “I’m just wondering about how do you want to handle the observing part. We can see some things from the ridge around town, but not everything.”
Mackey had already given that plenty of thought on the train. “We’ll set out at opposite sides of the hillside, meet up in the middle, and figure out what we need to hit and when. Freeing Jerry and taking down Grant and Rigg need to be the priority. Mad Nellie’s death won’t stop the Hancocks from coming at us, so killing her is low on the list.”
“Rescuing Jerry and killing Grant and Rigg is going to be a tall order for two men,” Billy pointed out. “Unless they’re in the same place, we’re going to have to choose which one is more important. I say rescuing Jerry’s more important.”
“It is,” Mackey agreed. “We’ll figure out who’ll be easier to kill once we look over the town. The only advantage we have is the element of surprise.”
“If you wanted the element of surprise,” Billy said, “you probably shouldn’t have left Rigg’s man in our train compartment. Even if the conductor kept his mouth shut about it, Rigg has already found him by now and knows we’re coming.”
Mackey wanted to feel some kind of emotion about what he had done. Not so much about killing him, but about how he had scalped him. How he had used the man to send a message to Rigg. He knew he should feel regret or remorse. The soldier in him should be furious how a theatrical display had cost him a tactical advantage.
But Mackey did not feel anything at all. And he had not felt anything since the moment Billy had told him his father had been murdered.
“Rigg knew we’d be coming anyway,” Mackey decided. “He had people watching us in Helena. He thought he knew when we’d get there. But now he doesn’t, and that’s going to be the difference.”
He hoped Billy was not going to ask him more about his plan because he did not have one. He knew the town had burned quite a bit and the landscape was probably much different than when they had last seen it. He had no idea where Grant or Rigg were staying. He imagined they’d spent a fair amount of time at the Municipal Building, but he did not know where either man was living. The Van Dorn house? The Ruby? He had no idea what they were riding into.
All he knew was that he regretted rejecting Sean Lynch’s offer of bringing twenty deputy marshals into Dover Station. A show of force was exactly what the Hancocks needed. A pile of Hancock dead would remind the town what happened to those who aligned themselves with Grant and Rigg.
But when Mackey ret
urned to his senses, he knew that was the darkness talking. Since he assumed Grant had regained control of the telegraph office, he had not dared to wire ahead from Helena to ask questions. He and Billy would have to find their answers on their own.
Billy pulled him out of his own mind by asking, “What was that name Wolf Child kept calling you?”
Mackey looked at him as if he had been shaken awake. “What name?”
“It sounded like your name, but wasn’t,” Billy said. “I’ve never heard him call you that before, and I couldn’t catch the meaning.”
Mackey remembered. “Máóhk Ki’sómma. It’s as close as he can get to saying ‘Mackey.’ It’s the name he gave me when he felt I was a man. It was to honor my father, who had always been pretty fair to his people over the years.”
“What does it mean?” Billy asked.
“It means Red Sun.” Mackey thought about it as they rode. “Always thought it was a pretty silly name until now.”
“Red Sun,” Billy repeated as if he was trying it on for size. “Seems fitting, especially now.”
Adair skittered as she caught the first whiff of dead smoke on the wind from Dover Station. Mackey patted her neck as he urged her forward.
“Wolf Child always had a knack for seeing the future.”
* * *
The lawmen tied their horses to a tree and belly crawled to the rim of the ridgeline that surrounded Dover Station. Mackey realized they were doing exactly what Darabont and his men had done when he had laid siege to the town more than a year before.
Upon crawling up the rim and seeing the town, Mackey realized there was not much left of Dover Station.
“Damn,” Billy swore. “It’s worse than I thought.”
Mackey found himself unable to speak.
A thin haze still hung in the late morning air, but Mackey could still see the devastation.
Almost every wooden building in town was gone. His father’s store was a ruin of scorched wood. Not a single post remained standing.
The Dark Sunrise Page 22
