Death Ground

by Ed Gorman

  “No,” she said, “no, I couldn’t.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Ten minutes after he finished listening to the girl, Sheriff Decker picked up his favorite shotgun, pulled on his sheepskin, and then began walking up and down the board sidewalks of the town, handpicking the men he wanted to form the posse.

  It took half an hour for the liveryman to get the eight horses ready, half an hour to kiss eight wives and twenty-three children good-bye, and half an hour to make sure that an adequate supply of warm clothing and ammunition was being brought along.

  Posses were still an exciting sight in the Territory, so by the time the nine men left, a crowd had gathered in front of McBride’s General Store, standing in the very sunny day in the very white snow, waving good-bye to the nine men as if they were marching off to a grand and romantic war.

  None of the men’s wives or children had any such notions, of course. They knew better. They knew exactly what their husbands and fathers were getting into because they were not lawmen or mean men or even men particularly adept with firearms. They were instead men from the mercantile and men from the insurance company and men from the telegraph company and men from the bicycle shop and men from the barbershop. Several of them hadn’t wanted to go at all but knew what young and well-educated Sheriff Decker could be like when he started in on such topics as civic responsibility (it must have been those law courses he’d taken up in Yankton that had caused him to carry on so) and how a Territory town must show the world the measure of its civilization by defending that civilization at gunpoint if necessary.

  Decker rode in front on a fast sleek roan. It was beautiful as its muscles pulled and rippled in the sunlight. Not a man had mentioned the fact that what they were really doing this morning was making up for Decker’s mistaken faith in the Bruckner brothers. He had spent many hours arguing to the city council that such men were needed and that, within limits, they could be trusted. Now the bounty man Guild had proved otherwise, but if the lawman Decker was the least bit ashamed, he certainly didn’t show it.

  Next to Decker rode the doc, a tall slender man bundled up in an Alaska-style parka with his black bag lashed to his saddle. Burmeister, his name was. He’d been one of the city councilmen Decker had always argued with over the Bruckner brothers. You had to know Burmeister well enough to notice the faint satisfied smile on his thin pale lips this morning. The Territory was becoming infested with smart-aleck young people who studied all sorts of things up in Yankton, including law and medicine, and then swaggered around the Territory acting as if they knew something you didn’t. Dr. Herman Burmeister was never unhappy to see such upstarts proved wrong.

  There was no snow and the sky was blue as a painting and there was no wind at all, and so they rode on fast as they could, nine men from town in the blinding white beauty of the day.

  She had started to smell, so Thomas Bruckner took the little girl and wrapped her tight in the blanket and then carried her outside and placed her next to the cabin.

  He was just religious enough that he considered it only fitting to say a prayer over her, and so he said a few proper words, or at least burial words, as he remembered them from all the tough Territory towns where he and his brother had roamed over the years. Then he took a shovel and covered her with enough snow so that wandering animals would leave her alone.

  Because he still needed the girl.

  She was dead, but in one way her part in all this had just begun.

  Then he went back in the cabin and fell to cleaning his rifle and his pistol.

  He kept checking his watch.

  His brother should be along anytime now. Any time.

  The man grabbed at Father Healy’s hand and said, “Back in Ohio, Father, I used to be a Catholic.”

  “I see.”

  “I want you to hear my confession.”

  “I—”

  Father Healy had been going to say, “I can’t do that. I’m not a priest.” But the man before him on the cot in the big central cabin would most likely be dead in the next twenty minutes, and what choice did Healy have?

  All these years Healy had avoided performing any of the real Catholic rituals—communion and confession especially—but now…

  “It’d make me feel a lot better,” the man said.

  Healy glanced around the cabin. For the most part, the dying seemed to be over. That was how cholera generally worked. There was a siege and many died right away, and if you were lucky enough to survive the first siege then you had good chances of living.

  There was sunlight now, and you could see on the faces of those lying on blankets across the cabin that their fevers had lessened somewhat and their knotting stomachs had calmed some and they did not call out for water quite so often.

  Except for this man Hamilton.

  He was in and out of consciousness—in and out of delirium, really—and you could see the color of his eyes fading.

  He said now, “Please, Father. Hear my confession. I want to be ready.”

  Healy said, holding the man’s hand, “I’m not really a priest, Hamilton. Not really.”

  But Hamilton grinned and said, “You’re a good enough priest for the likes of me, Father.”

  So Healy heard Hamilton’s confession and granted him absolution, and two minutes later there on the blanket, Hamilton died.

  Guild and James Bruckner reached the settlement early in the afternoon.

  They went immediately to Kriker’s cabin, and it was there they found the handcuffs.

  They had been sawed in half and there was no sign whatsoever of Kriker.

  They heard footsteps in the doorway, and there stood Father Healy.

  In a quiet voice, he said, “I let him go, Mr. Guild. I let him go.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Five minutes later, Guild, Bruckner, and Father Healy sat around the stove, sipping coffee and talking.

  Healy said, “I owed him that, at least.”

  “Owed him what?” Guild said.

  “One more chance at freedom. After all he did for those of us here in the settlement.”

  “You let an escaped murderer go.”

  “You much in the way of redemption, Mr. Guild?”

  “Not a whole lot.”

  “I feel he’s been redeemed.”

  “Half the killers in the Territory have got half the priests and ministers convinced of exactly that.”

  “And you don’t believe them?”

  “Not for a minute.”

  “You’re mad, I take it?”

  “You think I shouldn’t be?”

  “We’re different people, Mr. Guild. My feelings aren’t yours.” The priest smiled without any joy evident anywhere on his face. “Besides, you were the one who told me about comforting people.”

  “I don’t see where that’s got much to do with this.”

  “It’s got everything to do with this, Mr. Guild.”

  “Like what?”

  “His only solace will be in seeing the girl again. Alive and well. Then they’ll have the chance to take off for California. He can live a good life there, Mr. Guild. I believe that sincerely.”

  Guild said to Bruckner, “You better pray your brother didn’t hurt that girl.” Guild sighed. He put his wet socks near the stove and said, “Christ.”

  “What?” said Bruckner.

  “Now we’ve got to double back the way we came.”

  “What for?”

  “Because that’s where he’ll go.”

  “Kriker?”

  “Yeah.”

  Bruckner shook his head. “Sure hope he don’t hurt Thomas.”

  Guild glanced at Healy and then at Bruckner. “Guess that’s one thing I’ll never understand.”

  “What’s that?”

  “After all the things your brother did to you, you still worry about him.”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “He’s also the man who threw kerosene on you and the man who sends you on every dirty job he ne
eds doing.”

  “We all got our ways, Mr. Guild.”

  Guild sipped some more coffee and then glanced back at the priest. “How much of a head start he got on us?”

  “Maybe an hour.”

  “Damn,” Guild says. “He knows these hills a lot better than we do. He can beat us to the cabin.”

  Bruckner said, “There’s a way through the pass.”

  “You know it?”

  “I sort of know it.”

  Guild said, “That isn’t exactly reassuring. You ‘sort of’ know it.”

  The man with the burned face looked as if he’d been slapped. “I’m tryin’ to help, Mr. Guild.”

  Guild sighed. “Ah, Christ, kid,” he said. “I know you are.”

  Then to the priest, Guild said, “Next time you want to let somebody go free, make sure it’s somebody who doesn’t know the mountains as well as Kriker does.”

  Then Guild and James Bruckner set off.

  There had been no way to cut the cuffs themselves from his hands and ankles—only the chain that bound the cuffs together—so now as he pushed his calico through the heavy snow, Kriker’s wrists sparkled in the afternoon sunlight. In the scabbard of the saddle rested the Sharps and in his holster sat a .44 of recent vintage.

  All he could think of was the little girl. He saw her face that day of the robbery, when he’d taken her, and he saw her face all the times he tried to coax words from her, and he saw her face there at the last, on the cot when the cholera had come down on her.

  Then he thought of California. He recalled a painting he’d seen of a bay up in the northern region, a beautiful schooner ship so elegant against the blue ocean sky, the trees in the surrounding cove impossibly lush and green. There was where the two of them belonged, he and his daughter. He would come to see her grow to womanhood and take a man worthy of her as a husband, and they would bear children and Kriker would finish his days with the gunfire of his early life faded in the distance of time, just an average citizen sitting in a rocker on a porch sweet with breezes and the tang of pipe smoke. He would be an old man in the best way to be an old man—at peace in his heart—and she would be a young woman in the best way to be a young woman—with peace in her heart and children like wild flowers dancing round her and a husband judge-sober and heart-peaceful as her companion and protector.

  But then the sun angling off the snow blinded him and brought his mind back to the task at hand.

  Without the money as trade, he would have to figure out how to get to the line shack and get the girl out without getting her killed.

  He would kill Bruckner, of course.

  About that there could be no doubt.

  No doubt at all.

  He rode on.

  One of the posse men’s horses stepped in a hole and snapped its leg twig-sharp.

  The man put a gun to the horse’s head and pulled the trigger twice.

  The horse rolled over on its side and twitched only once, a great bloody shudder going through it there on the very white afternoon snow.

  Then the man climbed on the back of another horse and the posse set off again.

  Decker was still not saying much, his thoughts centered on the Bruckner brothers and how he had so smugly told the bounty man Guild that the Territory needed men like them. He had felt that he’d had the Bruckner brothers under control, that they might take the occasional bribe, that they might beat up the occasional whore after taking advantage of her services for free, but that they would not do anything so uncivic as to rob a bank or murder people.

  He just hoped that the other young Territory lawmen who had taken those courses up in Yankton did not hear about all this. There would be a reunion of the men someday, and he did not want this tale told over tin buckets of beer, with the scorn of others who had taken the same courses but applied them with more success.

  Decker dug his spurs into his mount.

  James Bruckner turned out to be a better guide than Guild had figured. He took them up through steep pine, and he took them around a narrow treacherous ledge that saved them a long ride over a seemingly limitless stretch of plain, and he showed them how to cross a narrow stretch of river where the ice seemed to invite the laughter of children and the click of iron skates on the silver surface.

  They stopped for a rest only once during the afternoon.

  Guild watched Bruckner carefully. He could see that Bruckner had changed ever since the prospect of his brother being shot had become a distinct likelihood. He wondered if the man with the burned face might now try to make a break for it, get away and warn his brother somehow. It was a very long shot, James Bruckner being neither particularly intelligent nor particularly brave, but as the man went over by a naked black elm tree to put a yellow steaming stream into the snow, Guild kept his double 10-gauge pointed directly at the man’s back. There had been a time when he had felt sorry for James Bruckner, and he supposed he still did. But this was before the little girl was taken. Now Guild did not care much at all about anything except getting her back safely.

  Bruckner turned around and saw that the double 10-gauge was pointed directly at him.

  “You gonna shoot me or somethin’, Mr. Guild?”

  Guild sighed, looking at the man’s poor burned face. He lowered the gun and said, “Just get back up on your horse, Bruckner. We’ve got to make better time than we have so far.”

  Bruckner had some difficulty getting mounted. Guild said, “Let’s go.”

  Thomas Bruckner sat in the cabin knowing that something had gone wrong for sure.

  By even the safest estimate, James should have been back with the money five hours ago.

  But when he looked out the window, all Thomas Bruckner saw were the steep hills leading up to the cabin, and the timber to the north.

  The timber would be a perfect place for a man to sneak up on the cabin and perhaps overwhelm the man inside. It would be much easier to fire from inside the timber than to fire from inside the cabin up to the timber.

  Much easier.

  He went back outside without being quite sure why. He stood under the cabin overhang and looked out at the vast white hills stretching before him. The late afternoon shadows were a soft blue. It was very beautiful and almost windless. The little wind there was whirled up snow like fine silt against his face, which reminded him of when he’d been a boy back on the farm and playing outdoors.

  He wondered if James had gone and gotten himself killed. While James had become too much of a responsibility, and while Thomas had certainly planned to part company with his brother as soon as he got the money in hand, he did not want his brother to die, even if a part of him knew that James would probably be happier dead. Then no one could point to his face or snicker at it.

  He went around the side of the cabin and checked on the little girl. She was still covered with enough snow that wandering animals would leave her alone. At least during the daylight hours. Night would be another matter. He considered the possibility of taking her inside tonight if James did not come back by then, but then he decided that would be just too eerie, sitting inside with a little dead girl wrapped in the blanket. He hoped for her sake the animals did not get her, but he guessed in the long run it didn’t matter much at all. He did not like to think of himself as mean, but he was adamant about thinking of himself as practical.

  He went back and stood under the overhang and let the fine cold silty snow cover his face and make his cheeks rosy and make him feel wide awake. He wished he had some good whiskey and a good woman, and he wished he had the bank money. He wished he’d had a clean friendly parting with his brother, and he wished he were on a transcontinental train, one where black porters waited on your every whim, and where you could sit in a private room and look out at the rolling plains and smoke a cigar and have not a worry about anything at all.

  He was wishing for all these things when the first bullet sliced into the frame of the door next to him.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  There we
re some small granite hills that provided a windbreak. Guild stopped to talk, since the horses needed a rest.

  “You’re going down to that cabin and you’re going to tell your brother that he won’t get out alive unless he hands the girl over. You understand?”

  James Bruckner gulped. “Yessir.”

  “Then you’re going to bring the girl straight up here, and then I’m going to go in and take your brother just as peaceful as he’ll let me. You understand?”

  “Yessir.”

  “That is, if Kriker doesn’t kill him first.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  Guild saw how scared he’d made James Bruckner. “I didn’t say Kriker would do that. I only said it was a possibility.”

  “Yessir.”

  Night was black in the sky and blue on the ground. The granite cliffs were without detail now, just looming black shapes. The horses shit steaming sweet road apples. Guild pulled on beef jerky. Bruckner, too upset, declined to join them.

  Guild said, “You going to do exactly what I say, James?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your brother’s going to hang. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yessir.”

  “I’ll testify in your behalf. I think I can convince the judge that you didn’t kill Rig or Tolliver.”

  “I don’t want him to die, Mr. Guild. He’s taken care of me all my life. He really has.”

  “He hasn’t done a real good job of it, son.”

  “He’s not a bad man, sir. Not a real bad one. Just sort of—rambunctious. That’s what Pa always called him. Rambunctious.”

  “How many men you suppose he’s killed?”

  “None he didn’t have to.”

  “I see,” Guild said. He swung back up on his horse. The wind was coming up. Guild thought of Rig and young Tolliver and how Thomas Bruckner had killed them so effortlessly. “Rambunctious, huh?” he said to James Bruckner. “Rambunctious.”

  They set off again. The night, despite its beauty, was starting to get bitter.