by Ed Gorman
“He don’t want to live,” the woman said. The cabin was in shadows because of the low-turned kerosene lamp, and the woman’s words filled the priest’s ears and he knew what she was saying—in effect, he doesn’t want to live and it’s up to you to change his mind.
As always, Healy turned almost instinctively to some sense of order and justice in the universe—to what others called God. How many nights had he lain in his solitary bed trying to summon up faith in such a deity, but always there was just the darkness and the silence. It seemed the most you could hope for was song in the wine and laughter in the dungeon, and that it was a world of utter chance, and when chance came against you, you were obliterated, literally, becoming an element of the cosmic darkness itself.
But then he remembered what the bounty man Guild had said about people needing comfort, and he knew then that Guild was right. Even if it was all a fake, this pretense of order and meaning, then it was a necessary fake and an ennobling one.
He said to Stan, gently as he could, “Next summer would be a good time for a child, Stan.”
Stan said nothing.
“You told me once how you were planning on having another one,” the priest said.
Still, Stan said nothing.
“Think of when the grass is green again and the sky is blue and there’s trout in the stream where we fished that time. Mae here would love to have you another child, wouldn’t you, Mae?”
And Mae flew to her husband then, seeing the opportunity the priest had given her, huddling against her husband, crying and helping him to cry, too, at the bitter death of their six-year-old.
“She’s been a good wife to you, Stan,” Father Healy said. “If you killed yourself, think what you’d be doing to Mae.”
And as he began to cry full now, the hard and racking and reluctant way a man cries, the priest who was not after all a priest stepped forward softly in the shadows and took from the aggrieved man the Sharps.
Stan’s fingers held the gun only briefly, then released it. “She loves you, Stan,” said the priest who was not after all a priest. “She loves you.”
And then Father Healy left, going back to the cabin to find the two burly men, and he passed a sobbing group of women and children carrying out another wool-wrapped corpse.
Near dawn they found it.
The place was just as Kriker had described—the trees in the exact formation, though bent now from wind and ice, the cave mouth oval-shaped with a jagged overhang that dipped down.
When he dismounted, Guild saw that his horse was beginning to shudder from exertion and the cold. From his jacket pocket, Guild took a handful of oats and held them up to the animal’s mouth. Then he went over and fed Bruckner’s grulla.
He said, “I’m going in the cave and get the money.” He waved the double 10-gauge at the tundra before them. Faint down the sky came ragged streaks of yellow and pink dawn. The round moon now had a flat look the darker sky had given dimension. “You can take off if you want to, Bruckner, but if anything happens to your horse, he’ll take you down with him.”
For emphasis, Guild rapped the handcuffs attached to the saddlehorn.
Bruckner said, “I won’t be goin’ nowhere.” He sounded sullen and young, and even though Guild felt sorry for the man and what his burned face must have done to him, he also hated him for going along with his brother’s blackmail plan.
Guild walked up to the cave entrance, his boots crunching through snow that snapped like glass.
He had just ducked under the overhang and started inside when he heard the unmistakable low rumble of a timber wolf.
He saw the wolf’s eyes glowing there in the darkness and then he took a very deep breath.
He sensed that the animal—frozen and afraid—might do what very few wolves ever did, despite the stories surrounding them.
The wolf might attack.
“You don’t talk much.”
Nothing.
“You scared?”
Nothing.
“I got no reason to hurt you. There’s no reason to be scared.”
She had come awake so abruptly, color coming back to her cheeks and eyes, that it had been like a dead person resurrecting. Thomas Bruckner thought of his Bible lesson about Lazarus.
He said, “You want some water?”
She nodded. Her face had an eerie luminous quality, especially her gaze. It made Bruckner uncomfortable and he wanted to tell her to quit looking at him, but he realized it would only make him sound crazy—or somehow afraid of her—and it wouldn’t do to have a small girl think you were afraid of her.
He got her water from the canteen and held her head up and helped her drink and then eased her back on her blankets.
He put a hand to her cheek. “Whoo,” he said. Then he stared at her. “Ain’t you curious what I was sayin’ ‘Whoo’ about?”
She fell into her unnerving silence again.
“I was sayin’ ‘Whoo’ about your cheek. You’re still burnin’ up.”
He plunked himself down next to her cot and huddled into his clothes. The windows rattled and the roof was like to tear off the way it sounded in the wind. Flame fluttered in the kerosene lamp and far distant you could hear animals—cows most likely—down along the rough line of barbed wire.
He did not like the feeling of isolation that had suddenly overtaken him. He felt vulnerable. He needed to talk.
If only to a small girl who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk back.
“I suppose you think I’m a real baddie.”
Nothing.
“What with me stealin’ you and all.”
Nothing.
“But I only done it ‘cause I figured Kriker’d give us the money and then we could leave.” He paused and thought about rolling a cigarette and then thought, no, he would have to take off his gloves and dig deep in the shirt beneath his sweater and sheepskin and—
“You seen my brother’s face?” By now he no longer expected the girl to say anything. He just wanted to hear his own voice here above the wind. “I did that to him. When we was kids. It was only a joke, but I don’t think deep down he believes that.” He paused once more to look back at the girl. Her eyes were open, but they were beginning to take on the same faded quality as before. He glanced around at the line shack. In the summer, after a hard ten hours’ work in the sun, it probably would have been nice to come back here and roll cigarettes and drink local wine and listen to the summer night. He had begun thinking about summer now. It helped cut down the wind and the sound of isolation. “We get the money now, I’m takin’ my brother to California, and I’m gonna buy him new clothes and give him a right nice time.” Pause. “You know, sort of make things up to him. Then—” He shook his head, about to say something he’d needed to say for years. “Then I’m gonna tell him good-bye. He’s got to find his own life and I got to find mine. With his face and all—” He shook his head again. “Well, he ain’t real easy to find friends for and I guess I kind of resent it and I take advantage of him and—” He exhaled as if he had just finished some very difficult task. “He’ll be all right. On his own, I mean. I’ll give him a good share of the money—ten percent, I figure—and buy him a fresh horse in addition to the clothes and”—he shrugged—“and then I won’t have to worry about him no more.”
He sounded very satisfied suddenly, as if the problem that had been so long burdening him had resolved itself with an ease so miraculous he could not quite believe it.
He said, “You want some more water?”
But he was turned away from her and then he remembered that the girl didn’t speak. Or wouldn’t.
So he turned around and looked at her and said, “You want some water?”
And the wind—it had never sounded more like alien song.
And the fragile line shack—it had never sounded more like it was being ripped apart.
And Thomas William Bruckner, he had never felt more like all the men he’d killed had come back for him. He’d had dreams of that many times, and now
he could see the men as in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe the chautauqua speakers so liked to read—dead and coming back for him.
“You want some more water?” he said again.
But then the wind was up again, and as he gazed down on her he realized that there had been some subtle shift in the angle of her repose and that she looked—poor little girl who reminded him suddenly of one of his many sisters back on the farm—she looked different somehow.
He lifted the canteen and started to bring it close to her parched mouth.
And then he realized why she struck him as having changed, realized why she did not look to be exactly the same little girl his brother had earlier taken from the settlement.
Because she was no longer the same little girl.
In fact, she was no little girl at all.
She was nothing.
She was dead.
Chapter Nineteen
Guild had just struck a Telegraph sulfur match against a dry jut of rock on the roof of the cave when the wolf lunged.
Two quick impressions: the cave was shallow and narrow. Near the back was a pile of small rocks, once more just as Kriker had described, beneath which he would find the bank robbery money.
The second impression was that of the wolf itself. In addition to the powerful teeth revealed as the mouth pulled back in a growl, in addition to the bushy tail and the enormous round pupils of the eyes, in addition to the yellow-gray fur and the white markings on the feet—in addition to all these he saw the dried blood on the side of the wolf, exposing a white glimpse of rib cage.
Something had attacked the wolf earlier and the wolf had crawled here to the cave, using it as a lair in the frozen night, and now intruders had come and—
Which explained why a creature who rarely attacked anything other than small prairie animals and birds—except in packs, when they were then bold enough to go after sheep and bison—would lunge at him now.
Guild had just time to drop to one knee and level the double 10-gauge.
But the wolf surprised him by diving over Guild’s shoulder and going straight out of the cave and then jumping up on the grulla holding James Bruckner.
The wolf moved with a blind savagery that Guild could not quite grasp.
Before Guild had time to respond, the wolf had dug its powerful teeth into the side of the grulla and had ripped away a large chunk of bloody flesh.
The animal reared up, crying out above the wind as the wolf continued to leap and rend, even managing to tear away more flesh as the grulla was up on its rears.
Now James Bruckner’s screams joined the grulla’s. Handcuffed to the saddlehorn, Bruckner clung helplessly to the back of the grulla, the wolf beginning now to snap at Bruckner’s legs.
Guild dropped to one knee again and fired.
He got the wolf in the side of the head, a large hole appearing where there had been an eye and the beginnings of a snout.
Then, just to be safe, he sent another one through the wolf’s chest.
The yellow-gray animal flopped over on the snow. A silver dust devil whirling up off the tundra began immediately to cover it in white.
The grulla, bleeding badly from the wolf’s attack, had now fallen over on its side, its legs kicking uselessly in pain, as if it were going somewhere.
James Bruckner was crying.
Guild got down and took out his handcuff key and got Bruckner separated from the saddle and then yanked the man away from the grulla.
Bruckner said, “What you gonna do, Mr. Guild?” But he saw very well what Guild was going to do.
Guild got the double 10-gauge ready.
“You got to do it, Mr. Guild?”
“Look at him,” Guild said. “You think I like it any better than you do?”
“Can I turn around?”
“I don’t care.”
“Thomas, he says I’m a coward.”
“You want me to tell you what Thomas is?”
“I guess I already know that.” Pause. The grulla was shrieking, writhing, massive and dying on the white. Red snow formed an ever-widening pool.
“You don’t mind, then?” James asked.
“I want to do it fast. For the horse’s sake.” He stared at James. James stared at the animal. You could see James was scared and heartsick for the horse. Guild said softly, “You can turn around, James. No sense in you watchin’.”
“You gonna watch?”
“I’m gonna close my eyes. Otherwise I couldn’t do it.”
“Poor goddamn thing.”
“Yes,” Guild said softly. “Poor goddamned thing.”
James Bruckner turned around and Guild shot the grulla in the head.
When he turned back to Bruckner, Guild saw that the man was crying again. Guild went over and stood in front of him in the wind, hearing its mordant eternal sound.
James Bruckner tried to hide the fact that he was crying, but he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. He said, “Sometimes I like horses a lot better than I do people.”
Guild smiled. “You know something, Bruckner?”
“What?”
“So do I.”
Then Guild got Bruckner up on his horse and handcuffed him to the saddlehorn, and then Guild went in and got the bank robbery money.
There were two satchels of it and there was plenty enough, green and crisp as it was, to kill people over if that was your inclination.
He went back out and took the reins of the horse and started the trek back to the settlement, James Bruckner snuffling from what had happened to the horse.
Kriker sat in the corner of the cabin, watching as the granny woman poured him coffee from a tin pot. The priest had asked her to stop in and see how Kriker was doing.
Kriker said, “Any more die?”
“Not in the last two hours,” She nodded to the window. A light blue sky filled the windows. “The father says maybe the worst of it’s over.”
“He doesn’t know nothin’ about it.”
The granny woman handed him the coffee. “You shouldn’t hate him so much, Kriker. He ain’t no better or no worse than anybody else in the settlement.”
“He ain’t a priest.”
She glared at him. “Who’s to say who is a priest and who ain’t a priest? Just ‘cause you got a piece of paper don’t mean nothin’. That ain’t what bein’ a priest is about.”
Even to himself, Kriker smelled. Ordinarily, at such times, he would haul water, heat it, fill a tub, and then sit in there with a cigar while somebody sat nearby to read a newspaper to him. Reading was beyond Kriker, but listening wasn’t. He had always imagined the day when the girl could read to him.
Kriker said, “I need your help, granny woman.”
“With what?”
“I think you know.”
She averted his eyes. “I told Father Healy I’d come in and look in on you. I better be leavin’.”
“They took the girl.”
“I know.”
“I want to go get her.”
“The bounty man’s goin’ to do that.”
Kriker paused. “You and me, we been friends a long time.”
“I’ll grant you that, Kriker. But the settlement’s—changed.”
“That why you’re so trustin’ of the priest?”
“You keep your tongue off him, Kriker.”
Kriker sighed, held up his hands. The handcuffs had bit into his flesh enough that small tears of blood had appeared along the bone of his wrists.
“There’s a saw in the shed out back,” he said.
“He’d know who done it, the bounty man would. Then I’d be in trouble.”
“I jus’ want to go get the girl from the Bruckners and then I want to light out of here.” He paused. “You know what’s gonna happen to me if the bounty man gets the girl and the money back, don’t you?”
“What?”
“He’s gonna take me in and they’re gonna hang me.”
“You didn’t kill nobody in that robbery.”
“No, but I had to kill people before and they’re gonna extradite me and then they’re gonna hang me.”
“I can’t do it, Kriker.”
“Her and me, you don’t know how good we could have it livin’ in California. I could get her the schoolin’ she needs, and I’d get me a job in some factory somewhere, and it could be real good for both of us. Then you and the priest, you’d have the settlement here and you could run it any way you wanted to.”
Obviously the granny woman was being swept up in his words. Despite her age lines, she had the look of a child fascinated by a clever uncle.
The granny woman said, “She’s your curse.”
“Who?”
“The girl.”
“My curse?”
“Sure. If it wasn’t for her, you could do just what I told you yesterday—ride out of here clean and fast.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“She ain’t your daughter.”
“As good as.”
“As good as don’t make her your daughter.”
“You don’t like her?”
The granny woman shrugged. “You was a good leader for the settlement till you brought her here. Then you started to change. It was gradual, but you started to change. All you cared about was her. The priest, he’s been helpin’ people more’n you have.”
“I’m sick of hearin’ about the priest.”
She looked at his handcuffs. “I can’t help you, Kriker.”
“Maybe they’re hurtin’ her.”
“I know you love her, Kriker, but you got to calm down for your own sake. You look wild. Crazy.” She went over and picked up a bottle of cheap whiskey. “Why don’t you have some of this in your coffee?”
“I need a clear head.”
Gently, the granny woman went over and put a hand on Kriker’s shoulder. “They ain’t hurtin’ her, Kriker.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. They wouldn’t have no call to.”
“They took her, didn’t they?”
“They took her, but they ain’t got no call to hurt her.”
He raised his head to her, his usual ferocity lessened somewhat by his worry and the fact that he had not slept. “You could go get the saw, granny woman.”
