Hope's End

by Mark Lukens

  Before the man could even turn, Jed had his gun drawn and aimed at him. “Yes, I know who you are, Sanchez.”

  CHAPTER 11

  For the second time in the span of a few minutes, the piano playing stopped.

  Sanchez turned towards Jed, but he froze with his hands down by his guns, only inches away from grabbing the pearl handles of his pistols when he saw that Jed had already drawn his Colt.

  “Don’t do it,” Jed warned.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Moody yelled from behind Jed. Karl had retreated away from the bar, knocking a barstool back, its legs scraping against the wood floor.

  “This man is Juan Carlos Sanchez,” Jed announced. “He’s wanted for a murder in Smith Junction.”

  “That was self-defense,” Sanchez answered. He stared at Jed, his body still tense, ready to strike like a rattlesnake.

  Now that Jed saw Sanchez’s face, he realized that the man was much younger than he’d thought, maybe barely twenty-one or twenty-two years old. Jed knew he had to be careful—Sanchez would be fast even though Jed had the jump on him.

  “Tell it to the judge,” Jed said as he kept his Colt aimed at him. “My job isn’t to try you, just to bring you in.”

  Everyone watched them. The barkeep had moved as far back behind the bar as he could, ready to duck down when the shooting started.

  For just a moment Jed was sure Sanchez was going to go for his gun, sure that he would be the sixth man he’d faced who would rather go out shooting than take that walk up the gallows steps.

  But Sanchez remained still.

  “You listen closely, Sanchez,” Jed said. “I want you to unbuckle your gun belts with your left hand.”

  Sanchez waited a few seconds, staring at Jed. And Jed could feel the man searching his eyes, searching for a weakness, for an opening. But then Sanchez moved his left hand slowly to his belt buckle and loosened it. The gun belt, holsters, and pistols dropped to the wood floor in a crash among the sawdust and tobacco stains.

  “You’re doing the right thing, Sanchez. Now take five steps back away from your guns and keep your hands up.”

  Sanchez’s mouth was a straight line underneath his thin mustache. He backed up three steps, keeping his hands up in front of him in a half-hearted surrendering gesture.

  Jed kept his Colt .45 aimed at Sanchez—he couldn’t relax now; Sanchez might have another pistol tucked away on him, even a two-shot Derringer.

  “Moody, you got any rope?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Rope.”

  “Yes. I think there might be some in the storeroom.”

  “Good. I need you to get me a few lengths of it.”

  Jed didn’t see Moody nod at the barkeep, but a few seconds later the man with the walrus mustache bolted out from behind the bar and kept close to the wall and wood-burning stove as he made his way towards the two rooms. He ducked inside the room to the left, leaving the door wide open.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Sanchez told Jed. “I shot that man in self-defense. He drew on me. I was just protecting myself.”

  “I’m sorry if that’s true,” Jed said. “Like I said, you’ll have to tell that to the judge.”

  “I’m certain I’ll stand a fair chance in front of a judge in Smith Junction,” Sanchez said sarcastically.

  Jed didn’t answer, and Sanchez gave up on his pleas, seeing it wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

  The barkeep was back with a few lengths of rope.

  “You got any other pistols on you?” Jed asked Sanchez.

  Sanchez gave a slight shake of his head.

  “Turn around,” Jed said as he walked towards him, scooting Sanchez’s guns back even farther away on the floor with his foot. “Get down on your knees with your hands behind your back.”

  Sanchez hesitated for another moment, but then did as Jed instructed.

  Jed fished out the pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket with his left hand and snapped a cuff on Sanchez’s right wrist while still holding his pistol aimed at the man, and then he cuffed the other wrist, shackling his hands together behind his back. Jed holstered his weapon. “Get on your feet.”

  Sanchez stood up. Jed patted Sanchez down quickly, but the man had no other weapons on him.

  “Go and sit in that chair over there.” Jed pointed at the closest table.

  The cowboy sat up straight now at the next table with Rose right behind him, watching everything with wide eyes, sobering up a little. Esmerelda had turned around on the piano stool, watching. Even the Navajo in the back room was watching.

  Sanchez plopped down in the chair, and Jed adjusted his arms so that they were behind the back of the chair, Sanchez winced a little as Jed forced his arms there.

  “The rope,” he told the barkeep.

  The barkeep snapped out of his daze and looked down at the coil of rope in his hands like he’d forgotten about it. He hurried over to Jed and handed it to him.

  Jed used part of the rope to tie the chain of Sanchez’s handcuffs to the spindles at the back of the chair, and then he used the rest of the rope to tie Sanchez’s ankles together. He stood up and stared at Sanchez.

  Moody rushed into action now that Sanchez was tied to the chair. He picked up Sanchez’s gun belt and pistols from the floor. “I’ll lock these in my office.”

  Jed nodded at Moody and watched him head to the other doorway to the right of the storeroom where the barkeep had gotten the rope.

  “You got a sheriff in this town?” Jed asked the barkeep.

  “No,” the barkeep answered. “Not anymore.”

  “A lot of people left after the mines around here dried up,” Karl offered. “Sheriff left, too.”

  “You got a sheriff’s office with a jail cell?” Jed asked.

  “Yes,” Moody answered as he came out of his office, walking towards Jed, taking over the conversation.

  Jed figured he could put Sanchez in the jail cell if he had to stay the night, but he wasn’t walking him anywhere through that storm out there.

  “I’ll take one more whiskey and those bowls of stew I ordered,” Jed told the barkeep.

  The barkeep had remained at the end of the bar, still frozen for a moment. He jumped at Jed’s command, seemingly eager to do something. “Right away, marshal.”

  After the barkeep set the bowls of stew on the bar top, Jed took a bowl of stew with a chunk of bread sunk down into it and a cup of tea to the table where David sat. “You eat up,” he told the boy.

  David had taken off his coat at some point and slung it over the back of his chair. He pulled his hat back and took a bite of the stew. He tore off a piece of the bread, devouring it.

  Jed went back to the bar to get the other bowl of stew.

  “Uh,” Moody said, approaching Jed. He couldn’t seem to hide his curiosity. “Is there some reason you’re traveling with that Indian boy?”

  Jed didn’t answer for a moment as he stood in front of the bar with the bowl of stew on it. “I found him in his home. His parents and brother were murdered.”

  Moody’s eyes widened in shock. “You know who did it?”

  Jed hesitated again. He shook his head. “I was taking Red Moon in for a bounty when me and my men were ambushed.”

  “Red Moon?” Moody asked in a whisper of awe. “You caught Red Moon?”

  “He got away. He might’ve killed that boy’s family. He killed my two deputies and stole our horses. I think his gang attacked us.”

  “And Red Moon got away,” Moody whispered.

  A memory of Red Moon flashed through Jed’s mind. He saw Red Moon staring at him with his bound hands shackled in front of him, arms straining, his eyes wide with fear. Shoot me. You promised.

  “Red Moon and his men may be around,” Jed said as he looked at the others in the saloon. “We all need to stay alert.” He looked right at Sanchez. “What about you? You riding with Red Moon’s gang?”

  Sanchez didn’t answer. He sulked in the chair.

  �
��You hear anything about Red Moon’s gang?” Jed asked Sanchez.

  “I don’t ride with any gangs,” Sanchez answered. “I’m not an outlaw. I was on my way back to Mexico. Back to my family.”

  Jed turned back to the bar and downed his glass of whiskey. He left his bowl of stew at the bar as he walked past Sanchez towards the Navajo in the back room. “What about you, fella?”

  The Navajo looked up at Jed, watching him approach. He was an older man, maybe in his late fifties or early sixties. His tanned face was a map of wrinkles, his dark eyes set deep under his brow.

  “You know anything about Red Moon’s gang?”

  “Because I am Navajo, you think I know every other Navajo in the world?”

  “That’s not an answer to my question,” Jed told him.

  “I have heard of Red Moon,” the Navajo man answered. “But I do not know him. Or his men.”

  “That’s Nez,” Esmerelda said, standing up from the piano stool and staring at Jed. “I don’t know his full name, but everyone just calls him Billy. He comes into town a few times a month to trade.”

  Jed looked at Esmerelda. Now that he was closer to her, he thought she was even more striking in a strange way. Not beautiful, but the word exotic came to mind. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Esmerelda smiled at him and sat back down on the piano stool.

  Jed was about to return to the bar. He saw that David was turned around in his chair, watching him talk to Billy. Jed looked back at Billy. “You know this boy?”

  Billy looked across the room at David for a long moment.

  Jed swore he saw recognition in Billy’s eyes, but finally the old man shook his head. “No. I do not know him.”

  Jed nodded at the Navajo man and started walking to the bar again, but this time Billy’s words stopped him.

  “The Darkwind is powerful magic.”

  “What did you say?” Jed asked Billy Nez as he turned back around to look at him.

  “I said the Darkwind is powerful magic.”

  Darkwind. Red Moon had said that same word. The wind had blown suddenly in the woods, shaking the tree he was chained to. He had looked up and called it the Darkwind.

  “The Darkwind is out there now,” Billy said, nodding towards the saloon doors at the other end of the room. “And it brings something evil with it.”

  “He’s right,” Esmerelda said. “I can feel something real bad out there.”

  “It’s just a storm,” Jed told Esmerelda, and then he looked at Billy. “Besides, I don’t believe in that stuff.”

  Billy Nez studied Jed for a long moment, and then he nodded like he’d reached some kind of conclusion he’d been internally debating. “You have already seen the Darkwind. You have seen what it can do.”

  “I didn’t see anything,” Jed snapped. He could feel the skin on his face and neck heating up with the lie he was telling. “All I know is some Indians were pretending to be skinwalkers and they killed my men.”

  The saloon went silent again for a moment—there was nothing but the sound of the howling wind outside.

  Billy stared at Jed for a long moment, his dark eyes never looking away. “Yenaldooshi,” he whispered.

  “What the hell’s a skinwalker?” the cowboy slurred as he turned around in his chair to stare at Jed with drunk eyes and a lopsided smile. Rose broke into nervous laughter beside the cowboy, spurring him on.

  The tension in the room was broken by their laughter.

  “Red Moon’s men might be out there,” Jed said, ignoring the cowboy’s question. He looked at Moody, Karl, and the barkeep, walking back to them. “We all need to stay alert.”

  Jed pulled up a barstool and began to eat his stew.

  Moody, buzzing with nervous energy, walked to the front doors of the saloon and looked out through the glass at the swirling sandstorm.

  “One more,” Karl said to the barkeep.

  The bartender came over and poured a shot of whiskey for Karl.

  “I hope this storm lets up soon,” Karl said. “I don’t want Ingrid to get worried about me.”

  “I’m sure she knows where you are,” the barkeep joked.

  Jed looked back to check on David and make sure he was eating his stew. David was watching Rose and the cowboy as they giggled. Rose whispered something into the man’s ear. He nodded and jumped to his feet. She hurried for the stairs, her low-heeled ankle boots clicking on the wood floorboards. The cowboy grabbed his bottle and raced after Rose up the stairs. At the top of the steps, they disappeared down the other hall to the left and out of view from the saloon. David watched them the whole way. Upstairs, a door slammed shut.

  There was a whoop from the cowboy upstairs, and Esmerelda began playing the piano again to mask the sound.

  Jed turned back to his stew. The stew was good, the bread even better. He felt a little better, even though the sadness and strangeness of what had happened to Roscoe and Dobbs still weighed on him. But at least he could bring Sanchez in for a bounty, making up for some of his lost money. It was little compensation, but Jed didn’t care. He just wanted the storm to end soon so he could get Sanchez and David on the trail up to Smith Junction and put all of this behind him.

  CHAPTER 12

  Two hours later night had come. An hour after sunset the sandstorm died down suddenly, the wind ceasing almost instantly. For a moment the silence inside the saloon was eerie. Esmeralda had quit playing the piano an hour earlier, helping the barkeep clean up the dishes and put away the food.

  The barkeep had lit more of the lanterns on the wall sconces and the ones inside the wooden chandelier as soon as night came.

  Karl paid his bar tab as soon as the storm was over, slapping two coins down on the beaten-up bar top.

  The only other sound inside the saloon was someone singing lowly. Jed turned and stared at Billy who was still seated at the back table. He was chanting, and his chants sounded similar to the ones Red Moon had sung in the woods. Billy had the eagle feather from his hatband in his hand, waving it around slowly in front of him with his eyes half closed.

  Jed walked over to David’s table. The boy looked exhausted, ready to fall asleep right there in the chair. “Get your coat on, David. We’re heading out soon.”

  “You’re leaving now?” Moody asked. “In the dark?”

  “Yessir. We’ll make camp a few miles north of here.”

  “I don’t know why you won’t take a room for the night,” Moody grumbled.

  Jed didn’t feel like explaining himself to Moody. He looked at Sanchez who was slumped down in his chair, doing his best to get comfortable after being tied to the chair for the last three hours. “Where’s your horse?”

  “Livery,” Sanchez answered.

  “Where’s the livery?”

  Sanchez stared at Jed, declining to answer.

  Jed looked at Moody, waiting for directions to the livery.

  “It’s just beyond the buildings across the street, back by the miners’ cabins.”

  Karl grabbed his overcoat from the coatrack and slipped into it. His pale face was red from drinking too much. He went to the double doors to go outside.

  Jed walked over to the bar. “Barkeep, I’d like one bottle of whiskey to take with me. And I’d like some of that tea for the boy. Do you have any sugar for it?”

  “Certainly. I’ll put some tea and sugar in a glass jar for you.”

  “Much obliged.”

  The barkeep went to work pouring the tea.

  “How about some hard candy and some jerky?” Esmerelda offered as she walked over to where the barkeep had just been behind the bar.

  Jed glanced back at David who had a hopeful look about the hard candy. Jed turned back to Esmerelda and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  The double doors of the saloon crashed open as Karl rushed back inside.

  Jed’s hand automatically went for his pistol, ready to draw.

  “What is the matter, Karl?” Moody asked.

  Karl stood at the doo
rs, one of them still open. He looked like he was confused about something. He stared at Moody. “The whole town is dark. Not a single lantern lit anywhere.”

  “What do you mean?” Moody asked, already walking towards Karl.

  “Every building . . . no one has a lantern lit at all. Not a sound out there, either.” Karl’s voice was rising, the pitch higher, his bright blue eyes wide.

  Jed’s stomach twisted into a knot, and that now-familiar feeling of oppressive dread weighed down on him. This was the same way he’d felt when they had first entered the woods. It was the same way he’d felt when he’d woken up and found Dobbs gone. And then Roscoe. This was the same way he’d felt when he had opened the door to David’s house and smelled the stench of blood and rotting meat. It was the foreboding feeling of danger, but not just any danger, something beyond that, something so bad that he couldn’t fathom it, something beyond his understanding.

  Moody brushed past Karl and stepped out onto the front porch of the saloon, leaving the door wide open. Karl followed him back outside.

  Jed left his goods on the bar top, grabbed his coat, and walked to the double doors, stepping out onto the wooden walkway, pulling the door almost all the way shut behind him. An energy buzzed through him, an electrical tingling on his skin as he stood there in front of the doors to the saloon. His right hand twitched slightly, nerves already firing in his body, already preparing for danger and waiting for his mind to catch up. That same feeling he’d had in the woods came back to him, that feeling that a rifle shot or an arrow was going to stab him from the dark at any second. He felt like a man at the edge of a thunderstorm and exposed to a lightning strike. But now that lightning storm

  (Darkwind)

  was gone, and it had left nothing but silence and darkness in its wake.

  The floorboards of the deck in front of the saloon were still scattered with sand and bits of broken twigs and dead leaves from the scrub brush shaken apart by the winds and blown down the main street of the town. Light poured out of the saloon’s front windows, the building so brightly lit compared to the other dark buildings in the town.

  Karl was right—there wasn’t a single lantern or candle lit anywhere in town.