Sary galloped on. The rain stopped. An omen.
She found she was heading west. Somehow, she or the horse had automatically veered to Shay Road, rimming the dry plate of seasonal Baldwin Lake, eventually winding past Gold Mountain foothills and the abandoned mine—her mine—and beyond. But what was beyond?
There must be a way down. Her mount thudded the rocky trail, the urgency telegraphed by her trembling thighs as Sary slashed the beast on. Can’t care which way—only get off this blasted mountain. Each inch of pounding hoof beat measured off victory.
She looked down at Jude. A scrap of oilcloth wedged under the bandolier was still secure against her shirt, shielding the infant somewhat.
So intent was she on Jude and the dark path ahead, and the horses’ pounding hooves against rock, that the thunder of many horses was lost until a hand gnarled as a root snaked out from nowhere, it seemed, and Julian dragged at Sary’s reins, his gray face looming close. It must have taken his every effort to ride her down.
Sary kicked out desperately, goading her mount. Her horse spurted on. Julian raced after, only now Sary detected the wet slap of many reins and squeals of leather in stirrups as Julian croaked, “Don’t fire!” Even as he drew.
Julian straightened his gun arm. His hand trembled. Sary’s head bobbed from his vision. Unable to hold steady, the revolver sagged, firing into the earth.
Aaron bellowed behind him, “Shoot, Julian!” Catching up and reaching over Julian’s shoulder, he fired.
“Don’t!” Julian whipped out. An anguished look screwed his face as Sary slumped.
She felt a hot hard punch in her shoulder and arm, and one hand no longer felt the reins. Warmth soaked her shirt and leaked down her arm. She clamped the yowling Jude between her elbows in a crossed, two-handed, death-grip on the pommel. Clenching thighs and digging heels deep in stirrups, Sary cantered on.
The mob caught up easily, shying her horse, generally getting in Julian’s way as he careened alongside. A few followers eyed Sary, then reined up at the gunplay and turned for home. Not much sport in this, after all.
****
Sary’s mount cantered on, panicked, reinless, as Ratchet appeared like a wet ghost from a cross trail. Sary registered that he galloped from the path to her old camp as her horse raced, unstoppable, past him. Glancing left, she impulsively veered right, onto a rough trail disappearing in the tree line.
Ratchet met Julian, showed his teeth, touched his hat, and tossed Jules’s skull to him.
Julian fumbled it, horrified at the empty sockets and strands of hair streaming away in the wind. Ratchet swooped by, catching it. Grinning, he lobbed it to Aaron as though in a game of ball. Aaron blanched and tossed the skull back.
Julian reined up short, staring at the skull. “It was him,” he whispered.
“Him?” Ratchet scoffed. “Him who?”
Julian swatted the pommel. “That brother! That fucking brother! She lied.” He clutched the skull to his chest. “Jules—Jules!”
Ratchet sighed long. “Except for one little situation. Ya see, Julian, I found the brother too, a-moldering in his grave.”
“Don’t mean nothin’!”
Ratchet shook his head. “Delacorte, my dear friend—”
“Ev’ret?” Julian cut in.
“All entering Heaven’s reward together.” Ratchet bowed, grinned, and sited his rifle at Sary’s ghost, vanishing in the drizzle that had started up again. “Busy little whore.”
Julian glared at Sary’s vanishing figure. “Don’t do nothin’.” He looked away. “She’s mine.” Even he didn’t know what he meant.
****
Forgetting the child in his red haze, Julian fired, searing the horse’s withers.
Sary’s horse panicked at the pain, veered off-trail, and skittered up a rise through pine. It wobbled off-stride, crashing back on-trail ahead. Julian raced, overshot, and wheeled, whooping for air, shakily aiming. Sary’s horse circled and bucked. “I have Jude!” she yelled, her whip lashing out with her good arm. Jude was clamped between her ribs and her bad arm, yet the jolting shook him loose—he was sliding out! A shirt button popped, and the oilcloth flapped away, wetly crackling.
Seeing an opening between the off-stride horse and her whip arm, Julian ducked beneath and incredibly, even to him, reclaimed the infant.
“No! You’ll drop him!” Sary screamed, bridging from her horse to Julian, slipping from the rain-slick saddle, hanging on Julian or she’d fall, viewing pounding hooves by her head and two mighty careening rib cages as their horses jostled side by side. She struggled up, her chin banging Julian’s shoulder, and found she clutched his reins. She pushed off and regained her saddle just as Julian wrenched the reins back, clumsily gripping Jude to his side and spurring on.
“Julian!” she cried after them.
Jude was held only by a bit of quilt.
She heard Jude’s outraged cry and Julian’s bark in reply, “Get used to it, Jude. Be my brave little man!” Then he snarled back at Sary, “I’ll never take him? Tchaaaa!”
He looked triumphantly at Jude’s red howling face.
Reining around, he spurred back to Big Bear, hooves kicking mud and rock past her.
****
Sary lashed after, but feebly. Her horse was tired, stumbling off-gait. Her own strength leaked with the blood drenching her side.
“Delacorte!” she called in despair and drooped over the mane. Then the pain started.
Julian never faltered—maybe she called only in her mind, yet she saw, mistily, Ratchet gallop alongside, dipping his head to Julian’s, and she watched as the two focused back on her.
****
Ratchet circled Julian’s mount, taunting. “Unfinished business back there.” Julian looked long in Jude’s face, then at Ratchet.
“Take care of it.”
“What, Delacorte?” Ratchet pressed, feeding off Julian’s conflict. Hungry for his hurt.
“You know. The—problem.”
Ratchet whispered, seductive as a lover, “Say it, then.”
Julian mumbled something, and Ratchet twisted his mount, rain whipping off his hat as he spurred back toward her.
She must go!
****
The last of the mob, until now avidly watching the drama, milled undecided. Should they follow Julian, galloping with wailing Jude for Big Bear? Or Sary, slumped over her saddle?
A few followed Sary to hector, but she was dead meat anyway, and after one look at Ratchet the stragglers jerked reins and either tagged after Julian or veered curiously off-trail to see from whence Ratchet had come. Maybe he had found the gold…
****
Sary’s horse limped on. Ratchet easily caught up, playfully waggling the gun at her slumped head, cocking and uncocking it.
He peered back. Trail’s empty of that softcock Delacorte.
His trigger finger tightened, followed by an explosion dulled by the drizzle-laden air. At that critical instant Sary sagged; the shot raked crossways down her ribs instead of through her temple.
Ratchet steadied Sary’s horse and his gun hand, blasting again across his crooked elbow, again missing. “Hell’s fire! Hold still, bitch!”
He tunked her skull with his gun barrel.
Sary, reeling, elbowed out, and then the hard knob of her whip handle connected, hitting the pure gold of cartilage and bone. Her whole arm twanged.
Ratchet clutched his Adam’s apple as he toppled off his saddle, thumping hard to ground, gagging and grabbing his throat. He shakily kneed the ground and threw up while on all fours, head drooping, sucking air, choking.
Meanwhile, Sary’s horse reared, its hooves slashing the rain. She tumbled back over its rump, thumping hard to the ground on her bad side, alongside Ratchet. She saw red, then black, then stars. After a terrifying absence, breath returned.
Dripping vomit, Ratchet grinned over at her as if they were compadres.
“Somethin’—ya—don’t know, Swinford!” he choked out.
<
br /> “Ain’t just Julian’s hatchet man—chop-chop! Gracie’s brother! Makes me—little Cory’s kin, don’t ya know.”
He dripped drool. “Not I give a tinker’s fart for alla that. But it does clear me.”
Despite the pain between her eyes, Sary stared down a black hole to eternity, a hole rimmed in blue steel. Ratchet advanced, the barrel steady.
She rolled aside, swinging a branch backhanded, and felt the shiver of wood, sensed the snap of Ratchet’s nose as it was shoved off center. His face sprayed a fountain, already swelling, with a cross-hatch bridging his forehead.
Ratchet, gaze never leaving her face, heaved to kneeling again, swiping blood and snot, smearing his eyes. He snarled, “You just don’t give up, whore! ’Cept whores have self-respect and don’t act like men!”
Sary held her side and hobbled over to boot Ratchet’s crotch, hating the soft, giving crunch, as he lurched half up. She bashed the branch until she could no longer stand or hold it up, and then she realized Ratchet lay still in a mud wallow.
Red gushed down her arm. It hurt so badly, and her head was floaty as a circus balloon. Using pain to stay sentient, she crawled to the horse… The stirrup played maddening games, skittering off. She looked up. An impossible height up the barrel ribs to the saddle.
“One last time,” she whispered. “Old friend.”
Reaching the pommel, each move shooting torment to her head, shoulder, and side, Sary managed a foot in a stirrup, and by mind-numbing degrees climbed up to fall crosswise on the saddle.
Ratchet blinked blood, water streaming his face, fanned his gun, uselessly clicking, hands slipping off the cock. But it only took one shot.
Her horse screamed, suddenly bucking off-stride. Still Sary lashed. It hobbled on, collapsing beneath her, and Sary tumbled heavily, tangled in the stirrups. Her head followed slowly, as if floating.
****
Ratchet, sighting with one eye puffed the color of gentian, wavered astride Sary. She sensed a hard whipping-singing like an angry wasp through her hair and felt the heat of it. Another shot pinged dirt beside her nose. Desperate, she whipped her head the other way as Ratchet’s swollen mess of a face dripped blood on her.
He bobbed closer and sighted once more, shaking his head as if bothered by flies.
Of a sudden, still firing, Ratchet saw double, stabbing where he thought she was, ’til the pin clacked.
He attempted gun clipping, swinging wild, and sprawled on top of her instead, gasping, “Now…give up.” He clamped his hand over her mouth until Sary, with a face pale as the emerging moon, lay still.
Ratchet heaved up, spitting teeth. Cupping his nose and his groin, he limped, cursing, to his mount, where he twisted to look back. One last look. It was painful, but satisfaction burned his face.
Sary lay in a spreading pool—dead and still as a rag doll.
Cursing all the way, Ratchet urged his horse into a careful canter to Big Bear and Julian.
****
Handi hobbled after Julian as he galloped in with Jude. Her doves ran alongside.
One burbled, “Ain’t this the most excitin’ thing ever?”
“Better’n old Earl playing mouth tunes on his comb or humpin’ me to death!” Another laughs.
Pearl clapped her hands. “Oh, sweet Jesus, we git to play with it again!”
****
Sary’s horse whinnied, nudging her, and she wheezed, squinting at her surroundings. Stars gleamed disturbingly close, as if they had swooped down to inspect and then soared up to their rightful place to coldly examine her from there.
Get up…get up…get UP! Get on your feet!
Sary dragged up, muzzily checking herself and her whereabouts.
Which way?
It mattered, somehow. Dim, rain-pocked roads melted into the distance both ways. Never mind. The important thing—before the other important thing—chore? She shook sense into her head, hung on the stirrup, and once more gripped the pommel, crawling up the horse’s side. Another long, long process. The miracle was that the horse stood patient. His flank and shoulder had stopped bleeding for now, though she hardly recalled her horse was wounded.
Bloody saddlebags bulging with gold, pressing her inner thighs, wove into focus. Sary vaguely patted them. They are important somehow too.
Her body tilted to one side, then back, barely aware of the saddle and horse beneath, but it was a warm and distant comfort. She was cold…especially her arm.
She must stay on this road. Thoughts faded. Only torturous jogging remained. Up, down, jolt hard on the saddle, lurch sideways, fight back to center as her poor mount limped along, its mane soft beneath her hands. Every cell electrified with the knowledge she needed to be far away—or at least somewhere else. It nagged her.
And so Sary sloped off, trailing blood, into the unknown.
She thought she returned to Big Bear…
Chapter 25
Julian, in his office, dry, rested, resplendent—Magnanimous! Expansive!—threw his head back, swooping down on Jude’s flat little nose, crooning, “Who’s the most boooful big ’trong boy? Who has Jules’s eyes?”
In fact, Jude’s eyes were greeny-blue and bright, not the aged tobacco-black of Jules’s hot wild gleam, but Julian didn’t notice as he gave Jude’s broad forehead an exuberant buss. “Yes! Bright-bright eyes. Yeeesss! Who—?”
Biskits, the barkeep, Sheriff Will, and others—Orvis, and O’Malley—crowded the doorway, darting looks between Julian’s seamed, gaunt visage and Jude’s wide face and broad, mushroom-button nose.
“Look at this fine hefty lad!” Julian chortled. “Now let’s hear some ignorant popinjay say Jules didn’t have the vigor—the iron!”
He gestured, his arm cocked with a fist. “Not”—he searched for words—“adamantine enough! Hah!” He checked the onlookers for affirmation.
“But Jules was a skinny little shi—” Biskits began. Sheriff Will banged his ribs. “Ooooph! Er, at least once,” Biskits avowed. “Maybe.”
Julian looked perplexed. “Why’s he bawlin’?”
Behind him, a soiled dove held an infant to bulging breasts in the doorway. Handi shoved her in—and was brushed aside by Ratchet, who looked run over by a herd of buffalo.
“Horse swung me inta a branch.”
“An improvement.” Julian waited. “Well? Where is she? Drag the murdering bitch-mother in!”
Ratchet smirked and whispered.
Julian squeezed the howling Jude. “Bring the”—he risked a glance at Jude—“whore in! Here! Here!”
Ratchet gave another urgent whisper. “Shuck of her, Julian. Took care…”
Julian looked uncertain, turning grayer. Finally he snarled, “Best pray I haven’t the true thrust of what you allege—the import!”
“Good as.” Ratchet grinned through split lips, and was knocked aside by Aaron pushing in bold, thunking Jules’s skull on the desk.
Aaron squeaked, “Lest you forget!”
Julian thrust Jude’s head to his shoulder. “Put it away! Not a thing for a…a son to see. What am I, a public forum? Get out!” He glanced sideways at the skull, planting a dearly recalled face over empty sockets.
Julian tore the star from Will’s shirt and jammed it onto Ratchet, snarling, “Don’t worry, Will! Still the man with the hat!”
He reached back for the hat, jamming it also on Ratchet, and thrust Jude at the nursing dove.
****
Julian knelt, creaky and hacking, over the blood splotch. Easing to his feet, he glared at Ratchet, who declared, “Not a genie in a fuckin’ bottle, Delacorte. She’s dead!”
“Apparently she’s the fucking genie.” Julian pointed at trailing red teardrop shapes.
“That way.”
****
Sary’s horse stumbled across iron tracks and shuddered, buckling to its knees beneath a deserted train halt—only a bare patch of sandy ground, a sign, and tracks abutting the foothills.
Sary’s arm sensed chilled metal. It lay a
thwart a thin rail shining blue with moonlight. Where am I?
Tracks faded in both directions. The horse lay inert, Sary’s foot wedged under the saddle. She yanked it out but crowded the horse for warmth. Later, she unfastened the saddlebags and tugged out the blanket to huddle weak, hurting, and very cold.
A train hooted a warning before she spotted the phosphorous clouds writing on an indigo sky.
****
Julian prodded the dead horse at the train halt and peered both ways down the track, checking his watch. “’Frisco.”
Ratchet kicked the horse. “’Frisco. Chicago. Place your bets, Julian.”
“’Frisco. What you waiting for?”
Ratchet contemplated Julian. He touched his nose.
“Well?”
“Heard you.”
“I’ll send what you need. Money? You want money? Here!”
Julian dug in his duster.
“Ever eat oranges?”
“What?” Julian screwed his face. “Once or twice.”
“Wanna suck oranges ’til I’m yeller.”
“Oranges! More money? I’ll send it.”
Ratchet smirked, touching his battered nose. “I’ll keep the wound green,” he said, and urged his mount west up the tracks. “It better be there,” floated back from the night.
“Ratchet…”
He was a black centaur-shape in the dark.
“What now?”
“I hear vengeance can be a true art form. Don’t be…too creative. There’s to be a trial. I’m owed a hanging.”
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