Holding his gun in a loose grip, Nick tossed it a couple yards away. He then climbed down from his saddle and stood next to Kazys.
“Sorry, Nick, but I need to do this.” With that, Joseph sighted along the top of his barrel and pulled his trigger.
The gun in Joseph’s hand barked. Joseph’s horse hopped off his front legs at the sound and shifted nervously from one hoof to another as Joseph struggled to keep control. Even as the bullet kicked up a mound of dirt a few inches from where Kazys was standing, that horse didn’t even flinch.
Nick had yet to change his expression.
Scowling, Joseph thumbed back the hammer and aimed again. Because his horse was still fretting beneath him, he couldn’t level his arm before Nick could collect his Schofield and walk right up to him.
Nick stopped a few inches shy of butting into Joseph’s barrel. “You know what the problem is?”
Joseph cursed under his breath while calming his horse and trying to steady his pistol.
Nick’s hand flashed up and around in a quick arc. The back of his left hand smacked against the side of Joseph’s gun, knocking it to one side. The gun went off as Joseph’s finger awkwardly hit the trigger, propelling its second round into the ground well away from the two men and their horses.
Even though his eyes didn’t leave Nick, Joseph didn’t see him raise his modified Schofield until it was pointed directly at his face.
“The problem,” Nick said calmly, “is that my horse has seen more gunfights than you have.”
Looking over toward Kazys, Joseph saw the animal calmly nibbling at a patch of grass while his own horse was still shaking its head and wriggling nervously.
“You’re a good man,” Nick said. “I know you’ve been through a lot. I’d like to help you. But don’t ever point a gun at me again. You understand?”
“I just wanted to spook your horse so—”
“Do…you…under…stand?”
Feeling like a kid that was being scolded after breaking a window, Joseph swallowed his pride and nodded.
“Good,” Nick replied as he holstered his gun. “What you’re feeling right now is the sting of being outclassed in a fight. Consider yourself lucky because, for most men, it’s the last thing they feel before getting their brains blown out the back of their skull. The men you want to hunt down will kill you without blinking, and they’ll take pleasure in doing it.”
“I know that,” Joseph said coldly.
“If I know you like I think I do, you’re also feeling a cold knot in the bottom of your stomach after shooting that man back at your house. That knot’s gonna be there forever.” Nick nodded solemnly. “I went through all this trouble to try and spare you them demons, but it’s too late now. The demons will come, and the more you kill, the louder their voices will get.
“But that’s not the only thing you started here by firing that shot. Whoever this Dutch is, he’ll know the man you killed is missing. Some of those others may have been replaceable, but that man was meant to bring back the strongbox you’re carrying, which means he’s got a whole gang anxiously awaiting his return. When he doesn’t come home, that whole gang will have one hell of a burr under their saddle.”
Joseph paused to let that sink in. After pulling in a breath, he lifted his gun and wedged it under his waistband. “They’re not the only ones who are upset about a few things.”
Nick walked over to Kazys and climbed into the saddle.
“If you think this is a fool’s mission, maybe you shouldn’t come along,” Joseph added.
“In case you forgot, my wife is looking after your son. When those men find out who killed their friend…and they will find out sooner or later…they’ll come after your boy and anyone who’s there with him when they arrive. They’ll do it out of principle, no matter what we decide to do from here on out.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because,” Nick said calmly, “it’s what I would have done.”
EIGHTEEN
Virginia City, Montana
1866
Nick was in his early twenties and barely more than a kid. He’d tried to make amends for the hell he’d raised, but found himself with a group of vigilantes who were worse than any gang Nick had ever joined.
One of those men stood over him after beating Nick within an inch of his life. His name was Red Parks and he’d just finished slicing off several pieces from Nick’s hands. The smile on his face was just as wide now as it had been when he’d done the cutting.
“Your days as a bad man are over, all right. I promise you that,” Red told him.
The next thing Nick heard was a quick series of pops.
Each pop was a shot from Red’s gun.
Each bullet blew off the mutilated remains of Nick’s middle and ring fingers like bottles being shot off a fence.
Once those shots died away, the men who’d called themselves the Vigilance Committee watched Nick squirm until he finally passed out. Their eyes were still glaring down at the young man when a sound from outside the old barn caught their attention.
“Someone’s coming,” said one of the men.
Red reached behind him to find a burlap sack that had been tucked under his belt at the small of his back. Pulling the sack over his head, he adjusted it until two holes cut in the rough material lined up with his eyes. The rest of the men in the barn followed suit.
“Let’s go,” Red told his men. “We’ve done plenty for one night.”
Most of the hooded men nodded and filed out the door like a parade of scarecrows. Two of them lingered over the bloody kid curled up on the floor. Their eyes glared down at Nick through the holes in those burlap sacks and seemed unable to look anywhere else.
“What about him?” one of the masked men asked.
Red looked over as if to admire his handiwork one more time. “Leave him. He’ll probably never even wake up.”
“And what if he does?”
“Then he’ll serve as a warning, just like I said before. He’ll show all his murderous friends what happens to their kind if they come near Virginia City.” Red walked out of the barn to address the locals who’d gathered outside.
The one man left behind stared down at Nick with his gun in hand. Since he wore a long brown coat, heavy boots and gloves along with the mask, his eyes were the only part of him that was exposed. Those eyes stared down at Nick the way they’d stare down at a wolf caught in a trap. He started to lift his gun and aim at Nick’s temple, but hesitated. If anyone else but Red had set that trap, he wouldn’t have hesitated to put the boy out of his misery. The hooded man knew all too well he might be the next one in such a predicament if he went against Red’s orders.
Reluctantly, he holstered his gun and left the barn.
Outside, Red had already convinced the locals that there wasn’t anything in the barn for them to see. Some of the locals took Red at his word. The rest knew how unhealthy it was to question him.
Nick woke up with the stench of blood filling his nostrils. He tried to straighten up, but that sent a wave of pain through him that nearly dropped him right back into unconsciousness. As he started to keel over, he caught himself with his hands against the floor. For a moment, he thought he’d slapped both hands against a red-hot grill.
A scream worked its way up from the back of his throat, but was muffled when it reached his tightly shut mouth. Nick’s jaw tightened reflexively and he flopped over so he wouldn’t have to use his hands again. As he lay there on his back, the memories of what had happened rushed back to him.
He couldn’t stay in that barn.
Red couldn’t find out he was alive.
He had to get out.
Nick started to crawl toward the barn’s rear door when he heard voices coming from outside. The surge of blood from his panicked heart was like a fresh load of coal shoveled into a steam engine. He got to his feet and charged toward the back door without a moment’s hesitation.
When he got to the door, he tucked
his hands against his body and slammed his shoulder against it. The door had been latched shut, but gave way easily under the young man’s attack. Nick bolted into the night and kept running until Virginia City was behind him.
Along the way, he spotted a few shocked faces trying to get a glimpse at him, but none of them was covered in burlap. Nick’s lips curled into a feral snarl as he used the pain churning inside of him to fuel his steps. He ran into the darkness before he stopped to think about where he was headed.
After a few seconds of squinting and filling his lungs with air, he guessed he was headed toward the mountains. Anything more than that was beyond his ability to grasp, so he kept on running until his legs felt close to collapsing under his weight. Even then, he managed to run for a few hours more.
Feeling something warm on the back of his neck, Nick jerked awake and pulled in a mouthful of dirt. His legs were pumping as if still running, and he reached out to turn himself over. His mangled hands still hurt, but the pain had become Nick’s only companion. He pushed through it and forced himself up.
Nick was crawling on the ground with trees surrounding him on all sides. His eyes darted back and forth, searching for anything to let him know which direction he should go in when he managed to stand up and start running again. All he had to go on was the direction his head was already pointing. Guessing that was the way he’d landed when he was running the night before, Nick pulled himself up and kept moving.
The sunlight hurt his eyes when he tried to look over his shoulder. Once his brain cleared a bit, he figured he was running south or southwest. After a while, his legs started to cramp and every breath was almost too much of a labor for him to accomplish. Cursing his own body for being so weak, Nick dropped to one knee and pressed the back of one hand against his mouth.
He didn’t know how long he stayed in that spot.
It seemed like his feet were rooted there for hours.
When he tried to move again, Nick felt as if he’d only rested for half a second.
The sounds of feet crunching against fallen leaves and twigs made Nick’s next breath catch in his throat. His could only see two blurry figures moving toward him. One of the figures was bigger than the other, so that was the one he chose when he attacked.
Nick lunged off of both legs with his hands held in front of him. Working off of pure animal instinct, he tried to grab the bigger of the two’s throat to show that he wasn’t weak. His bloody hand made it to the man’s neck, but the pain from his mangled fingers was too much to bear.
Blackness flooded through Nick’s head and his legs turned into straw, crumpling him to the ground as his hand snagged upon the other man’s collar. Using his last bit of strength, he reached up with his other hand to try and finish off the job he’d started.
The man in front of Nick was slightly shorter than him and at least thirty pounds lighter. His short, brushy hair was a subtle mix of light brown and some red. A neatly trimmed mustache covered his upper lip and a pair of small, round spectacles sat on his short, rounded nose. The eyes behind those spectacles were wide with shock and fear.
The second of the two figures was a woman. She was slightly shorter than the man and slender in build. Her long brown hair came almost down to her waist and was tied into a single thick braid. She rushed over to the man, but stopped short of getting within Nick’s arm’s reach.
“Don’t come any closer,” the man said. “He’s a wild one.”
“I can see that, Doug! He might hurt you!”
Doug waved to her and slowly eased his other hand around Nick’s wrist. He was able to peel Nick’s grip from his collar without much effort. “He’s hurt. Pretty badly by the looks of it.”
The woman stepped closer. She moved tentatively at first, but then relaxed when she saw Nick was practically hanging off of Doug’s arm. “Oh, my God,” she gasped. “Look at his hands.”
“I know. There’s plenty of other wounds as well. We’d better get him back to the house.”
“What?”
“We can’t just leave him here, Sue. He’ll die.”
“You don’t know that.”
“These wounds are fresh, but they can become worse if they’re not tended to. Now help me carry him to the house.”
Sue was less than a few feet from Nick, but she eyed the boy as if he was a distant curiosity. The harshness in her face melted, but only when she turned again to her husband.
“Please,” Doug said. “I’m not about to drop this boy here and walk away like I never saw him.”
“Fine.” She sighed and went to Nick’s other side, sliding in under Nick’s other arm. “But if he takes a swing at me, I’ll drop him like a hot rock.”
“Fair enough.”
NINETEEN
When Nick woke up for the second time that day, it was one of the most disconcerting moments of his life. The memories of what had been done to him by the Vigilance Committee were still fresh in his mind, as was his flight into the woods. The sight of a normal room and the feel of a normal bed were complete oddities.
A face looked down at him and smiled warmly, which put Nick even further off his guard.
“What the hell’s going on?” Nick snarled as he sat bolt upright and pushed his back against the wall. “Who the fuck are you?”
“My name’s Douglas and that woman behind me is my wife, Sue.”
With a bit of effort, Nick focused his eyes enough to see the woman standing at the opposite end of the room. She was pretty, but very nervous. She was also holding a shotgun aimed at Nick’s bed.
“You assholes working for Red?”
Doug squinted and shook his head. “I don’t know a Red.”
“Red Parks,” Nick growled as if the name was an obscenity. “I know I didn’t run far enough away for you to not know him.”
“Oh, you mean the man who leads those vigilantes in Virginia City?”
“That’s the one.”
“I don’t know much more than his reputation, but I can tell you that men like him were why we moved out of town to live here.”
“How far did I make it?” Nick asked.
“Did you come from Virginia City?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you made it just over seven miles,” Doug told him.
Nick felt the weight of those miles drop onto his shoulders. The aches in his muscles flared and he barely had enough strength to keep his head up.
When he looked around again, the quaint little room felt much less like a fever dream. The window was open and decorated with frilly curtains. The furniture looked new and was all freshly dusted. In fact, Nick felt more like a guest in a nice hotel than a bloody fugitive stretched out on a stranger’s bed.
Looking back to Sue, Nick asked, “Why’s she got a gun?”
“Well,” Doug told him, “you haven’t been very easy to manage.”
“God damn, did I give you them bruises?”
Doug winced as if he could feel the dark spots on his cheek and jaw with renewed intensity. “Yep. You sure did.”
“Sorry about that.”
Doug smiled right away and shook his head. “Don’t even worry about it. I’m more concerned with what happened to you.”
When Doug reached out to pat Nick’s hand, Nick reflexively pulled his arm in against himself. A good amount of the blood had been cleaned away, but the bandages had also soaked up more than their share.
“If you don’t want to say anything now, that’s fine,” Doug said. “But at least let us get you a doctor. With you being so…rambunctious before, we didn’t want to start in on stitches until you had a chance to wake up.”
“Did you clean me up?” Nick asked.
“No. My wife did that. I had to hold you down.”
Nick ignored the shotgun in Sue’s hands and looked into her eyes instead. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Her face lost some of its hardness as a timid smile began to shine through. When it did, she looked even prettier than before. “You’re welcom
e.”
“Will you agree to see a doctor about those hands?” Doug asked. The moment he saw Nick nod, he stood up and let out a relieved breath. “Great. Our neighbor was an army medic. I’ll bring him over and he can do what he needs to do. Sue, I think you can put that shotgun down now.”
Sue looked as if she’d been asked to undress in front of the young stranger. “What?”
“The shotgun. We don’t need it anymore. This young man was just out of sorts. There’s no need to—”
“It’s all right,” Nick said. “Actually, I don’t blame you if you want to keep it. I must look like some kind of animal right about now.”
Although Sue softened up a bit more, she didn’t deny Nick’s statement. She also didn’t put down the shotgun. She did, however, lower it so he wasn’t forced to look down its barrel.
“Since we’re all situated here,” Doug said to his wife, “I’ll take over guard duty and you can send the girls to fetch Bill Mather before making something to eat for our friend here.”
Sue nodded, but didn’t leave until Doug came over to her and took the shotgun. She whispered something in his ear and then nodded to Nick. “Sit tight,” she said. “Bill will be here before you know it.”
After Sue had left the room, Doug pulled up a chair and sat down. He was just about to say something when Sue poked her head in again and fixed him with an intense glare. Flinching as if he’d been knocked in the head, Doug held the shotgun in his hands rather than setting it to one side, as he’d just been about to do.
“Things around here have been a little…rough,” Doug said. He shrugged down at the shotgun and explained, “We moved far enough away so we wouldn’t have to watch those vigilantes ride down the streets, but that also means we need to protect ourselves.”
“I understand,” Nick said. “A lot worse than you have pointed a gun at me.”
“I don’t believe I got your name.”
Before he answered that, Nick paused to wonder how far his own name might have spread. Since he was too tired to think that much, he simply replied, “Nicolai Graves.”
“That’s a name you don’t hear too often. I’ll bet most folks call you Nick.”
Man From Boot Hill Page 11
