Dan recognized the voice of Charlie Littleton, but he had no time to think of that, for he heard a horse plunging into the creek. He pressed backward into the cedar, rolling over until his body was wedged beneath the body of the tree and the damp earth. He could do no more, and when he saw by the light of the moon the reeds and willows part and the forelegs of a horse appear, he thought it was over.
But the horse moved on, passing so close that Dan could almost have touched it if he had stretched out. He thought of a time in Virginia, at Spotsylvania, when he had been pinned down by Union sharpshooters in thin cover. The sun had baked him dry, almost cooked him, and he could see the muzzles blaze as his foes took their shots. He could not expose even a hand. Night had come then, and he had crawled off. He remembered the tiny creek he’d found, no more than a foot or so across, and foul with the passage of men and horses, yet that water had been as sweet as any he’d ever known as he’d lapped it like a dog.
Then, heat and drought had been the enemy; now it was damp and cold, and he knew that even when morning came, his adversaries would be watching both sides of the stream. The night breeze was cut off by the cedar tree, and the absence of the wind gave the sensation of warmth. He knew this was an illusion, that the cold was sapping his strength as much as the loss of blood. At Fredericksburg the wounded had been left on a field for two days, neither side willing to call a truce so that they could be moved. Some of the members of Dan’s own company had died not of their wounds, which need not have been fatal, but of the cold and lack of care.
He knew well that he might die under the cedar, for there was no hope that those who sought him would show mercy. The deadly ambush had almost succeeded, and those who prowled all about him would kill him on sight.
Time moved on, and he began to tremble with the cold. At first he could will himself not to shake, but soon that ability passed, and his body moved involuntarily, only mildly at first, but later with a series of violent spasms that almost made him groan aloud as his leg was stirred.
Finally he dropped off again into a fitful coma—not sleep, but more a state of unconsciousness such as comes to the very ill. And in that sleep, dreams came, fragments from his past that seemed to touch him with ghostly fingers as they brushed across his mind. He heard again the muted echoes of distant guns swelling into a furious storm, such as he had not heard since the war, and after that the rattle of musket fire, much like the snapping of thousands of dry sticks, just as he had heard it at Antietam and Gettysburg and dozens of other bloody fields.
Along with the sounds, he seemed to see those who had lain in shallow graves for a decade—men he had marched with, shared the comradeship of battle with. The face of Billy Simms—who had always been able to find food—came to him, as clear as a daguerreotype! A thin, cheerful face with a pair of bright blue eyes and a wide grin. Billy—who fought in every major battle in Virginia, from Manassas to the end—who had died of a musket ball in the stomach on the last retreat from Richmond to Appomattox.
Dan moaned faintly, trying to speak to the memory of a friend long dead, but could not. Other faces—long forgotten and blurred by time—floated by, and finally faded.
Then other dreams came, mostly of his boyhood and young manhood. His father, Sky Winslow, as he had appeared the day when Dan had killed his first buck. His mother, Rebekah, her face rapt as she sang in church, and in his dream he could almost feel her warmth as he had pressed against her when he was very young, sitting on the hard wooden pew as Reverend Sanderson preached. This dream was the most vivid of all, for he could smell the polish on the floor and hear the rustle of pages as his mother used the hymnbook. Amazingly enough, the voice of Reverend Sanderson came to Dan as he lay under the tree, and the sermon he had heard twenty-five years ago came back. Not all of it, but fragments that came to him as though filtered through some sort of fragile covering: “Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die!” This he heard many times, not only in the high tenor voice of Reverend Sanderson, but in the warm voice of his mother, for it was a favorite of hers.
Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
As the words came to him, Winslow dreamed that he was in some sort of big open field, and that he was not alone. Many, many people were with him, young and old—and of every race, it seemed. At one end of the field was a tremendous canyon, so deep that the bottom of it could not be seen but lay wreathed in dark wisps of clouds, and thunder rolled distantly from the depths.
Many of the people moved to the edge of the field, and when they came to the lip of the canyon, instead of stopping—they stepped right off. And as they did, they seemed for the first time to become aware of the great gulf and began to scream as they fell, their terrible screams fading as they plunged into the darkness that swallowed them up.
Winslow saw others in the crowd who seemed to become aware of the danger, and who struggled to turn back, or twist aside. For some this awareness lasted only for a brief time—and then they joined the others moving blindly toward the abyss and plunged off with them.
Others seemed totally aware of their danger, and some of them were attempting to persuade others to avoid the edge of the field and the dark chasm beneath, but these were for the most part ignored by the hordes milling around them.
And then over the voices of those in the field came one loud, clear voice like a trumpet that said, “He that liveth and believeth on me shall never die.” Many in the field seemed to respond to the trumpet-voice, to become aware of the terrible danger at the end of the field.
The dream faded, but over and over Dan Winslow heard the voice, saying, “He that liveth and believeth on me shall never die.”
Winslow came awake—not all at once, but in the manner of a man coming out of the depths of the sea into the light. Out of an ebony darkness to just a few feeble bursts of light; then his eyes opened to see that morning had come. He tried to roll over to get from beneath the log into the sun, but at once it felt as though someone had thrust a white-hot sword through his thigh. He fell back, closing his eyes, sick with the pain of it. Finally he moved very slowly, coming out into the sun, and the touch of it warmed him a little.
His throat and lips were dry, and it took him twenty minutes to drag himself to the edge of the stream, where he drank deeply of the cold water. There was no sound except a bird singing, and he lay still, letting the warm sun begin to dry his clothes and drive the chill away. Finally, he took a grip on a thick sapling and pulled himself upright. The effort brought the pain in his leg alive, and he looked down to see that he had caused the bleeding to start again. But he saw also that the bullet had passed through the fleshy part of his thigh on the outside. The knowledge that the bullet was not imbedded brought some relief.
Gritting his teeth, he ignored the pain, and when he looked around, saw no one. He thought of moving to drier ground, but if he did, anyone searching for him would see his trail—and besides, he knew he would eventually have to drag himself back to the creek for water.
Carefully he lay down again, rolling over to let the sun dry his clothing completely. By late morning, he was dry, all except his feet.
Got to be dry or I’ll freeze tonight.
He pulled his left boot off with little trouble, removed his sock and wrung it out, placing it in the sun to dry. The right boot took half an hour, and when it was finally off, his face was pale with the agony of the effort. But by noon, the socks were dried, though the inside of the boots were still damp. Better let the sun dry the inside, he thought, and lay back to rest.
He had no intention of sleeping, but suddenly found himself waking up with a sharp jerking motion. He heard the sound of hoofbeats, and he dragged himself as quickly as he could back to the hiding place beneath the cedar tree. Shoving himself under, he could see little, but the sound of voices floated to him, though so far away that he could not make out the words.
A thought occurred to him that it might be a friend looking for him—but he had told nobody where
he was going. Then he considered the possibility that it might be some hunters or fishermen rather than his killers returning.
Got to take a chance, he thought, and he noticed as he carefully stood up, holding the slick side of the cedar, that his thoughts and movement were slower. Carefully he came upright, putting all his weight on his left leg and holding on to a naked branch with a bend like an elbow. The weeds and undergrowth were chest high. He could see three men on horseback, about fifty yards downstream.
But one glance was all he needed, for one of those men was Ash Caudill, and the other two were the Littleton brothers, Charlie and Dion. At once he lowered himself to the ground, despair closing in on him. They moved away downstream, but an hour later they came back, this time so close that he could hear part of their conversation.
“ . . . got to be around here someplace! He’s not a bird, Charlie!” The speaker was Ash Caudill, and there was anger in his voice.
Charlie Littleton answered him, and he, too, spoke sharply. “He got away into the timber, Ash. No place else for him to go.”
“Without a horse? We’d have found him long ago. He’s still here, I tell you!”
Dion’s voice came then: “He ain’t here, so he had to move up the creek or down. He just got farther away than we looked, that’s all.”
Caudill shouted, “Then send men both ways! You two botched this thing, and it’s up to you to finish it!”
They moved away, and Winslow sat down and tried to think. He was basically a man of action, and inactivity made him restless. But now there was absolutely nothing he could do. All afternoon he waited, once hearing the sound of men calling, but when one of them said, “We ain’t found him downstream—” he knew it was his enemies.
Finally the sun sank, cooling the air. The night, he thought, would be colder, though he couldn’t be sure. He got a drink, then moved back under the cedar tree, and soon the darkness was complete.
He could not sleep and made up his mind that at dawn he would have to move, to try to find help. Rather go down trying than to snuff out like a dying animal in a hole, he thought grimly.
But after a fitful nap, he awoke feeling hot—which meant fever. He felt clammy and his face was flushed. He grew thirsty and went for a drink, but the cold water made him sick, giving him stomach cramps. He knew he needed warmth and food, for the cold and the wound were sucking his vitality. Crawling back to the log was much more difficult, so much so that he had to rest on the way, and when he got there, he fell asleep at once.
He had been right about the temperature, for a cold breeze swept down from the hills that night, chilling the air. The feverish heat of his body ebbed, and he found himself awake again and shivering with the cold. He drew his body into a ball but was helpless against the elements. The pain in his leg was not so savage, but he knew that he could not travel at dawn, not more than a few yards.
He lay there, swept by trembling spasms so fierce that they knotted his muscles. He tried to think but was so weak that his mind began to wander. The stars were hidden for it was a cloudy night, with a hint of rain in the air, and the blackness seemed to press down on him like a thick blanket.
He slept fitfully, but at some time before there was even a trace of dawn in the sky, he awoke, his head clear, though he was miserable from cold and hunger. For what seemed like an hour, he lay there, the cold clamping him like iron bands, convinced that he was going to die.
It was not the first time this had happened to him. Both during the war and later in the range wars, there had been occasions when death had seemed inevitable. He had always handled it by putting the significance of it out of his mind, but somehow this time his usual reaction was not possible. He had been a brave man, his courage proverbial among his fellows, but now as he lay helpless in the thick darkness, he felt the cold taste of fear.
Not of death, for he was not afraid of dying. But the dream he had had was clear in his mind, and he thought of it with dread. He had no doubt about what it meant. Not that he put much stock in dreams—but this one had been the clearest one he’d ever had.
It was not so much death, but what happens to a man after death—that was the thing that began to rise in him.
And he could not escape what he had heard about that destiny since his childhood. For years he had buried the knowledge that all men and women must go from this life to another. He had never had anything but contempt for atheists, for it seemed folly to him to deny that man was different from beasts.
He thought much of his parents, how they faced any and all difficulties with peace, and he knew that their serenity was—as they confessed—due to their faith in Jesus Christ. And as soon as he thought of Jesus, he was suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of his own weakness. The very thought of Jesus brought a sudden fear—and a hope just as abrupt.
But he could not help but think of the years of running from God, nor of the sin that had controlled him during that time. Shame filled him, as it had never done before, and he knew that the shaking of his body was not just from the fever but from the sobs that rose in him.
For a long time he lay there, filled with despair as he thought of his wasted life. He longed to cry out to God, but could not. What can I do, now that I’m about to die? A man can’t ignore God all his life and then go whimpering for mercy when it’s too late for him to do anything for God.
Then he was startled, for he remembered his mother singing:
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ, my God;
All the vain things that charm me most—
I sacrifice them to his blood.
He thought about those words, and the meaning came to him with a burst of clarity. “Why, a man can’t do anything! It’s all got to be of God!”
And then he was flooded with scriptures he had heard—and thought he had forgotten—all speaking of God’s grace. “For by grace are ye saved through faith . . .”; “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy hath he saved us.” These and others came to him, and then as in his dream, he seemed to hear the words:
“Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
The night was still a stygian blackness, and the pain was ripping at him. There was no hope for survival as he lay there—but somehow he slowly came to a point when he did the one thing he’d fled from for years.
“Oh, God!” he whispered, and he felt that he was speaking to a deaf heaven, for his spirit was crushed, and hope of living had fled. “I’ve run from you all my life. Now I’m dying, and it seems like a cowardly thing to do—but I’m asking you to help me. I don’t have any right to call on you, but I call anyway. Give me what my mother and father have! Forgive me for my sins—and in the name of Jesus Christ, save me—!”
In the blackness of the night he cried out with a fervor that shook him. He was not conscious of time but continued to pray and to seek God. Finally he grew quiet, and there seemed to be nothing.
And yet there was in Winslow a growing consciousness that something was very different. He could not explain it, not even to himself. He was still sick and dying—but the deadly pressure that had been pulling him down was gone.
He lay there, only half-awake, conscious that the sun was coming up. A light was growing in the east, and as he watched, he suddenly understood that what had changed was his spirit—a guilt had been lifted that he had vaguely known was there. Now he knew that he had been struggling with it for years, but suddenly it was gone!
Reaching up, he touched his face, brushing his hands across his eyes. I feel all clean! he thought with wonder. It’s all gone—all the weight! He began to thank God, not that he was out of danger, but that no matter what happened, he had found a peace that he knew would never leave.
As the light grew, the fever came back. He started to tremble as the chills returned, and as he began to slip away, he was aware that someone was coming. He thought he heard someone calling his name—and just befo
re he lost consciousness, he called out, his voice reedy and frail: “I’m here!” and then he knew no more.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A DESPERATE SEARCH
Hope rarely dreamed, and even when she did, she usually never remembered what she dreamed. However, shortly before dawn, she awoke with a start, her body lunging with an abrupt jerking motion, and she sat bolt upright. She even cried out, an involuntary reaction to the fear that came to her in the darkness.
She stared around in confusion, somehow convinced that someone had called out to her, and the first thought that came to her was: The house is on fire! However, there was no other sound, and as she peered through the darkness, she saw nothing. She twisted to look out the window, but the night was very dark, and all she could see was the vague outline of the barn.
And then the dream came flooding back—though it was not a visual thing as much as a sound. She seemed to see herself, asleep in the bed, as though she were overhead looking down. Then she remembered that she had heard a voice calling her name—Hope! Hope!—and she saw herself beginning to twist and writhe on the bed. Then the vision faded, and she knew that she was lying on her bed, and the voice was calling, more urgently than before. In the dream she began to try to sit up, to move, to open her eyes, but it was as though she were frozen, for she lay there helpless. The voice came again, calling her name, and for one moment, she had a fleeting impression of Dan Winslow’s face. She seemed to see it vaguely, and the sight of it frightened her, for he was pale, his eyes glassy, and his lips twisted with either pain or fear. He seemed to focus his eyes on her and then cried out, Hope—Hope, come and help me!
It was fleeting, but the intensity of it drove sleep from her, and she rose and lit the lamp. The room was cold, and she shivered as she began to dress. When she was dressed, she went to the kitchen, where she rekindled the fire in the cookstove. She fixed coffee, then sat down at the table and tried to shake off the unpleasant sensation that the fragment of the dream had brought.
House of Winslow 14 The Valiant Gunman Page 26
