Out of the Darkness

by Robert D. McKee

  Passionate or practical, no one was altogether one way or the other, but, Micah guessed, everyone was primarily one way or the other. That was as much a part of people as the color of their eyes.

  His gaze moved about the room. What, he wondered, was Chester? Was Chester primarily passionate or primarily practical? Judging by the technology that fired his interest, he might be practical. Micah lifted the largest piece of a new Kodak “Snapshot” camera. There were a half-dozen smaller pieces scattered about the table. He smiled. Chester—an engineer, a physician, a man of science—was certainly practical, but he was a man passionate about his practicality.

  “Careful, now, don’t you be disturbing my projects.” Chester said this as he sauntered into the library. His spirits seemed high right now. It was clear he’d expected to spend the next fourteen years of his life smashing rocks with a sledgehammer. Since that fear was now gone, he had been doing a great deal of sauntering.

  Micah replaced the camera piece among the rest of the debris and turned toward his friend. “What are you dressed up for?” he asked.

  Chester was shaved and his hair slicked down. He wore denims and a heavy wool shirt. The cigar, a bit smaller now, was still clenched between his teeth. Around his hip was strapped a six-gun. “I’m not going to let you go out there alone.” He tossed another holster and revolver to Micah. “Here,” he said, “try not to shoot yourself—or even worse, me.”

  Micah caught the gunbelt and buckled it on. Two pieces of rawhide hung from the bottom of the holster, but Micah didn’t bother to tie them around his thigh. “Collins is coming with me,” he said. “I’m not going out there alone.”

  Chester laughed and turned to leave the library. “Micah,” he said over his shoulder as he headed toward the kitchen and the door at the rear of the house, “going with Brad Collins is the same as going alone.”

  The late-morning sky was the color of lead, and a steady northwest wind took the feel of the fifty-degree temperature down a notch or two. Micah turned up the collar of his jacket and was glad he’d worn gloves.

  Collins hadn’t said much on the ride out from town. When Micah arrived at the sheriff’s office with Chester, Collins gave a grunt of displeasure and said, “I’ll swear you in as a deputy, McConners, because Earl Anderson tells me that’s what Judge Walker wants, but I ain’t swearing in this doctor.” Chester assured him he didn’t wish to be deputized under any circumstances, and he promised to stay out of the way at all times. Collins gave another grunt and didn’t look happy.

  After he administered the oath to Micah, the three of them went outside and Collins looked even unhappier when he realized Chester intended on riding his moto-cycle. “You’re not planning to ride that damned thing, are you?” he asked.

  “Sure am,” said Chester with a broad smile.

  Collins shook his head. “Well, when it breaks down, you ain’t riding double with me.”

  It had been more than ten years since Micah had been to this part of the county. When he was a kid, he and his father would often spend summer afternoons searching the ancient, dried-up watering holes in the area for arrowheads. They always made it a point to avoid the Jones place, though. Delbert Jones, Lester and Hank’s father, had not been an affable sort, and if anyone rode up unannounced, old Del was as likely to shoot him out of his saddle as offer him shade and a cup of water.

  Micah’s memory of his father’s caution regarding the Joneses was not lost on him now. He was glad to be wearing the Colt Chester had provided. There was a time in his late teens when Micah was pretty fair with a handgun—at least when it came to putting holes in tin cans. It had been a while since he’d used a gun, but he expected if it came right down to it, he could still handle one well enough if he had to.

  At least well enough to avoid shooting himself in the foot. He hoped so, anyway.

  They came over a rise, and below was the Joneses’ ranch house. Things seemed quiet enough, but they waited and watched a bit before Micah said to Chester, “Collins and I will ride on down. I don’t want that loud machine of yours to let him know we’re coming any sooner than we have to.”

  Micah and Collins rode toward the house at a trot, but Micah was prepared to turn away and gig his horse into a gallop at the first sign of anything strange. There was nothing, though. They rode into the yard, right up to the front porch, without seeing a soul or hearing a sound from either the house or any of the outbuildings.

  Collins looked to Micah, and Micah gave him a nod.

  “Hank Jones,” Collins called out, “are you in your house?”

  There was no response.

  Micah looked back toward the hill and waved Chester in.

  “Hank, this is Sheriff Collins. If you’re in there, come on out. We want to ask you some questions.”

  When there was still no response, Micah swung his right leg over the horse’s rump and allowed his left foot to slip from the stirrup. He flipped his reins over the rail and stepped onto the porch. He knocked twice on the door. “Is anyone home?” he shouted.

  Nothing.

  Chester had pulled up in the yard as Micah called out. “Do you suppose he heard we were coming,” Chester asked, “and ran off?”

  “Anything’s possible,” said Micah. “I expect he knew someone’d be coming sooner or later. It’s no secret what Polly had to say on the witness stand yesterday.”

  Micah tried the door and it was unlocked, but he didn’t want to barge in before he had a better idea what he was barging into. He walked to a window and peered inside. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark of the room, but when they did, he felt them widen. He then heard someone shout, “Jesus Christ!” It was a second or two before he realized he was the one who’d done the shouting. He lurched back from the window.

  “What is it, Micah?” Chester asked. “What did you see?”

  Micah faced them, swallowed hard, but didn’t say a word. He then spun back toward the door and ran as fast as he could into the house. He heard Collins and Chester run in behind him.

  Hank lay on his belly in the doorway between the main room of the house and a small bedroom. Micah had run in at full tilt but skidded to a stop eight or ten feet short of the body. The others came up beside him.

  A huge pool of dark, viscous blood covered the floor almost up to where the three men stood. Two sets of saddlebags lay beside Hank. One had popped open, and canned goods had come out and rolled about the floor, leaving aimless, swirling tracks in the gore.

  There was a small hole in the back of Hank’s head, but in front his face was almost gone. Teeth, bone fragments, and pieces of flesh were scattered around the floor like some grisly archipelago in a murky sea of blood.

  Micah lifted his hand to his stomach and felt the tide of coffee he’d drunk earlier that morning rise. He stepped back to the open front door and inhaled a couple of chilly late-December breaths. After a bit he turned back to the other two who still stared down at Hank. “We don’t have time to tend to the body right now,” he said. “We’ll have to come back for it later.”

  “Why’s that?” asked Chester.

  “Because,” Micah said, “we have to get over to the Pratt place as fast as we can. Emmett Pratt planned on confronting Sonny and bringing him over here to meet us so we could take Sonny and Hank back to town. Emmett thought he could bring Sonny in peacefully.” He glanced at Hank’s body. “But it doesn’t look like Sonny plans on doing any of it peacefully.”

  All the color leached from Collins’s gaunt face, and he backed away from the body. “I’m finished with this business,” he said as he pushed his way past Micah and out onto the porch. “This whole damn thing has gotten way out of hand.” He climbed on his horse. “I’m done.”

  “You’re what?” Micah asked.

  “I don’t plan on getting killed by some crazy kid, not for a measly hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, I don’t.” He reached inside his jacket, unpinned his star, and tossed it onto the porch. It bounced across t
he planking and landed at Micah’s feet. “Here,” he said, “you can give this to the county commissioners for me.” With that, he wheeled his horse and loped away.

  “Christ,” Micah mumbled under his breath as he picked up the badge. He shoved it into his pocket.

  “Well,” said Chester, leaning against the doorsill, his arms folded across his chest, “I told you if you’d gone out here only with Collins, it would have been a lot like going alone.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Sonny Pratt was not a man given to analyzing his motives, but he felt so good on the ride home after killing Hank Jones, he had to wonder why. Although he hadn’t noticed it at the time, he remembered feeling the same way a few months earlier after cutting Lester’s throat.

  It has been a harsh winter for the Jones boys.

  That thought made Sonny smile. Not counting the Mexican Sonny ran into last year outside of Casper, Lester had been the first man Sonny had ever killed. He supposed it wasn’t the thing a fella should be doing, killing white folks. But, damn, he could not abide disloyalty. Sonny had been having to deal with disloyalty his entire life, and now that he was a full-grown man, he did not intend to take it anymore.

  Looking back on it, it was clear that he should have killed Polly at the river last spring the way his good sense told him to. If he had, everything would’ve been all right. Hank and Lester would still be alive, and that God-damned trial would have never happened.

  That thought dulled Sonny’s good feelings some. It was a terrible mistake not killing Polly. She turned out to be the most disloyal of the bunch. But he shouldn’t be too hard on himself. How could he have known she’d tell her mother and the doctor and that lawyer and in the end the whole God-damned town? Who would have expected it? After all, he did do his best to put a scare in the girl. Sonny had figured at the time what with the scare and the fact that she was family—not blood, of course, but family all the same—that Polly would keep their little adventure down by the river to herself.

  He’d sure been wrong about that one.

  Now, he guessed it was too late to kill her. Hell, she’d already done her damage. Now it came down to his word against hers. And if she turned up dead, he’d be the first one they’d suspect. He’d gotten away with killing Lester. With killing Hank, folks might be a little suspicious, but there was no way they could put him in the Jones house this morning. Polly, though, was a different story. If she turned up dead after her testimony yesterday, things could get pretty warm. Nope, he’d missed his chance with Polly. Next time he would not allow himself to be so damned careless.

  Live and learn.

  Sonny always enjoyed the ride home from the Jones place. It was a rough trail that went up over the breaks, but at one spot where the cliffs were the steepest, it looked out past La Prele Creek all the way to the North Platte and the rolling prairie beyond.

  There was very little snow right now, except on the north side of some of the larger boulders where the sun never hit. It was a beautiful view, and Sonny stopped for a moment to appreciate it. It had been cold off and on so far this winter, but right now Sonny guessed it was upward of fifty degrees. The view here was nice, but he thought it was prettier when it was all covered in snow.

  Sonny liked the winter. Most folks only bitched about the winter, but not Sonny. He looked up at the white disk of sun that shone through the gray clouds. This time of day in any other season, his old man would be giving him hell about calving or branding or harvesting or rounding up or . . . Christ, the list went on and on. But the winter was different. The winter slowed things down. Sonny liked that. Sonny liked things slow.

  He nudged his right spur into his horse’s flank and started off again.

  The world was starting to move way too fast for Sonny’s tastes. He’d been down in Cheyenne a few months back and there were telephones all over the place. Messenger boys were pretty much driven out of business. The talk was there would be phone lines strung up all over Probity here in the next few years.

  He read somewhere that back East there were gas lines everywhere, and now everyone was talking about electricity.

  Sonny didn’t like it. He figured he’d been born about thirty years too late. He would have liked to have lived in the earlier times, the frontier days the old-timers talked about. Back then a fella could ride his horse in a straight line in any direction and never see a fence. Those were freer times without all the towns and people and rules. Rules and laws. Lawyers and lawmen. Judges and juries.

  Sonny turned his head downwind, cleared his throat, and spit. The wind caught the spittle, lifted it, and carried it twenty feet before in finally came down in the rough arms of a dry piece of sage brush. Sonny expected the day would come when a man couldn’t even spit when he wanted. There would always be someone around like that McConners fella telling a man whether he could or he couldn’t.

  McConners. Now that’s the one who could use some killing. Smart, know-it-all son of a bitch. Holed up for three weeks before the trial in a nigger’s house. What kind of a man would do that? Sonny figured McConners was screwing that nigger filly too. But he guessed he couldn’t blame him. Fay Charbunneau was a fine one. He wouldn’t mind having some of that himself.

  When Sonny rode into the yard, he saw his father’s gelding tied at the front porch. That was strange. The old man had gone into town early that morning, and Sonny expected he’d stay there all day.

  Sonny tied his sorrel next to the gelding, climbed the porch and went in the house.

  “Where you been, Sonny?” Emmett asked before Sonny could even take off his hat.

  “I took me a ride on this fine December morning,” Sonny said. He hung his hat and coat on the hall tree, crossed the room, and sat in one of the easy chairs in front of the fire. He stretched his long legs out and felt the heat soak through the thin soles of his boots. These old things have about had it, he told himself, looking down at his beat-to-hell footwear. He’d get a new pair the next time he was in town. Right now, though, the heat soaking through felt pretty good. He liked the winter, but he hated when his toes got cold.

  Sonny looked toward his father and said, “I figured you went into town.”

  “I did,” said Emmett. “I had myself a conversation with Thomas Blythe.”

  Returning his gaze to the fireplace, Sonny watched as flames curled off a two-foot-long cottonwood log. “Why’d you want to waste your time talking to that fool? He couldn’t get a man convicted who admitted to committing a crime. It’s the damnedest thing I ever heard.”

  “I also had a visit with Micah McConners.”

  When Emmett said that, Sonny didn’t turn his head away from the fire, but he did take his father in as much as possible out of the corner of his eye.

  His father had been talking to McConners. That was interesting. Sonny had been wrong earlier. Polly wasn’t the most disloyal of the bunch. This old bastard was. First he lets Sonny’s mother die, then he marries that school teacher and brings her and her brat kid into their house. And now this. What was next?

  “McConners, eh?” Sonny said. “Now there’s another waste of time. What business could you have with that man?”

  Emmett sat in the chair across from Sonny and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “McConners wants to visit with you and Hank about what Polly said in the courtroom. He wants to ask you boys a few questions.”

  “Ask a few questions, hell. He wants to see me in prison. That’s what he wants.”

  The old man sat back in the chair and nodded. “Well, I expect he believes what Polly says, all right, but he strikes me as a fair man. If you tell him your side, he’ll give it consideration. You’ve got to talk to him, boy. He’s running the show on this, no one else. As far as this thing’s concerned, McConners is the law.”

  “That’s right,” Sonny said. “McConners is the law. What have you been telling him, you old fool?”

  Emmett looked away, ran a hand over his balding head, and said, “I haven’t tol
d him anything. I want you to talk with him. That’s all.”

  His father was a fine rancher and businessman, but he was not accomplished at deception. Sonny knew he was lying as soon as the words toppled from the old bastard’s mouth, but he kept his face impassive and allowed Emmett to talk.

  “It may be hard, but you got to face this thing, Sonny. Whatever it is, I want you to know I’ll stand beside you. Maybe I haven’t always been there in the past, but I’m here now. Mc-Conners isn’t the sort to let it go. He’ll get to the bottom of it before he quits, so we have to deal with this thing. We have to go to him and talk it out.”

  “Go to him?”

  Emmett nodded. “I told him I’d bring you in. I was afraid if he and the sheriff came after you, there’d be trouble.”

  The old man stood and started to pace. He was a great one for pacing. “You’ve gone a little wild in the last couple of years, Sonny. I got to admit that. I expect you’ve done some bad things, but I still believe you’re a good boy. I don’t know if you did what Cedra and Polly say you did. The fact is no one knows except you, Polly, and I reckon Hank Jones. I do know what they accuse you of would be a hard thing for even a man as clever as Micah McConners to prove, especially at this late date.”

  Sonny held back his smile.

  “It’s a tough thing to know what to do,” Emmett said. “I don’t know for sure what’s right. I guess I’ve spent my whole life sorta making things up as I went along.”

  With that one, Sonny had to clamp his jaw down and purse his lips to keep the smile off his face. “Me too, Pa,” he said. “Me too.”

  “But I worry about you, son. I worry if something’s not done to stop the direction you’re headed, you’ll be lost forever.”