“I’m a-gunna make that sumbitch pay, Eli!” Harley said as more tears welled up in his eyes. Indeed, he intended every word of his promise, repeating it over and over, as he stalked around, head down, looking both high and low for his blade.
“Gol-damnit, Buck, you had it last. You git up an’ help me fin’ it,” he bellowed.
Up to that point, Buck had avoided looking over in Eli's direction—evading the grief. But now it hit him that he'd never see his brother alive again. He threw down the ammo bag.
“Fine. I want you to cut off that basterd's head for wat he done to Eli!” Buck told him, now choking back his own hot, burning tears.
“Gol-damnit Buck!” Harley shouted again, still looking for the knife. “I cain't fin' it!”
“Then I'm a-gunna mutey-late him some more wid this,” exclaimed Buck, picking up Harley's bayonet-tipped rifle and using it as a crutch to help him stand upright.
But as he turned back, raised gun in hand, Galen was no longer there—only a depression in the ground.
“Huh?” exclaimed Buck.
Harley also turned, sensing something was wrong. “Sumbitch,” he gasped, gazing in amazement at the void son the ground.
“Where’d he go?” whispered Buck.
“What?” asked Harley.
“I says, ‘Where’d he go?’ The dead guy?”
“I dunno,” barked Harley. “And quit whisperin’! Cain’t hear you wid my bad ear.”
He hurried over to Buck and snatched his gun from his brother’s hands. “Gimme dat.”
Harley’s head swiveled around when he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Quickly he turned and fired his rifle, his bullet cracking into the side of a tree thirty feet away.
“Gol-damnit!” he huffed. His hands shook as he took the powder horn from around his neck and began the process of reloading his gun.
“Wuz it him?” Buck asked. His gunshot wound still ached, but now his knees were becoming shaky.
“I dunno,” Harley told him. “Cain’t be. Dead men don’t jes’ get up and walk away.”
“Unless he ain’t dead,” said Buck, stating what both of them thought but neither had said.
“I ran him through. Stabbed him twice. I saw the light go right out his gol-damned eyes,” Harley exclaimed. Having taken the lives of several people over the years, he was pretty certain he knew when a man was good and killed.
The sound of a footstep came from close by; both hillbillies spun and looked. Buck winced from the discomfort of movement and shifted his weight to his good leg.
“Gol-damn,” hissed Harley between his teeth. He was starting to feel his chest tense up in knots. “Let's git out of here.”
“What about Eli?” Buck asked, his teeth now chattering from fear and pain.
“Eli's dead!” Harley burst out. “He won' mind. Let's get back to the wagon!”
With some effort, Buck scooped up Galen's boots, guns, and pants before beginning to gather Galen's ammo bag.
“Leave it!” cried his brother. “Let's git.”
Harley burst into a run, but Buck held back.
“Mah gun!” he shouted after Harley who, even if he had heard, wouldn’t have stopped.
Buck hobbled to his gun. He spotted his musket right where he’d left it—leaning against the side of a tree when he began thinking less about his gun and more about the boots belonging to the crazy sumbitch who’d fired on them.
With Galen’s possessions bundled against his chest, Buck had trouble grabbing his rifle. The barrel slipped through his fingers and the gun fell onto the ground.
“Damn,” Buck whispered. He bent down to pick it up, dropping the boots in the process.
“Damn!” he muttered again, just as he heard the footsteps come up behind him.
“Help me wid it, Harley,” he pleaded. “I'm in a lot of pain.” He turned his head, sensing his brother getting eerily closer.
He found no one there.
Fear gripped Buck’s chest, as though caught in the clutch of a bear. His mind returned to the moment when they were younger and their father once sat the three boys around a campfire and told them ghost stories until they cried, then continued telling them until Eli had fainted dead away. The fear that held Buck now was much, much worse.
Quickly, he picked up the boots and hooked his fingers around the barrel of his rifle before hobbling away, trying to remember where they left their wagon. Harley had already disappeared into the woods and Buck figured he was alone—and yet he swore he heard breathing that wasn’t his.
Buck turned around and his face blanched. Stepping out from behind the same tree that supported his riddle was the man he had watched his brother kill only a short while earlier. Though his pants and boots were missing and his shirt was torn and bloodied, the man looked otherwise uninjured; indeed, his murderous glare looked, instead, injuring.
In his right hand, Galen held the bone-handled knife Harley thought he had lost—the blade still tinged with blood from the Mexican woman’s tongue.
Buck dropped the stolen boots, pants, and guns to the ground. As Galen stepped closer to him, his hands scrambled to bring the rifle up—only to find the gun already spent.
Buck had never bothered to reload his gun afterwards.
The rifle fell from Buck’s shaking hands and he dropped to his knees.
“I’m sorry!” he sobbed. “I didn’t mean nothin’.”
“You mean by killing me?” Galen asked as he approached Buck.
“You already done shot me!” Buck screamed. Tears streamed down his face. His voice nearly raised an octave as he clasped his hands together. “I’m real, real sorry!”
“Oh, I forgive you for what you did to me,” Galen admitted, now on top of the hillbilly.
Buck’s face relaxed a moment, albeit in confusion.
“But what you did to that woman—that I’ll never abide,” Galen said before plunging the blade into Buck’s eye socket.
Harley ran until his lungs burned, finally reaching the wagon. Eli had insisted that they unhitch the two horses and tie them to nearby trees to prevent them from running away. Now Harley cursed Eli’s decision for the time it would cost him. Quickly, he tossed his gun into the back of the wagon, untethered the first horse, and dragged the unwilling nag to the rig before harnessing him. The second horse, however, was not as cooperative, and nipped at Harley’s hand, drawing blood.
“Stupid animal!” he hissed before he cracked the horse across its face. He tugged hard on the nag’s bridle, but the animal pulled away and reared up on its hind legs, emitting an angry and percussive warning grunt.
“Gol-damnit!” Harley exclaimed, putting his hands up to protect his face. “Fine, I’m leaving without you!”
Grumbling back to the wagon, he stopped in his tracks. Standing thirty feet away, staring right back at him, was the man he had just killed.
Galen was still holding the knife.
“Gol-damn,” Harley said under his breath. Even from this distance, he could see that same shine of life he remembered taking away now back in the man's eyes.
And those live eyes now brimmed with vengeful anger.
Harley didn't pause any longer; his feet erupted into a dead run toward the wagon. Buck had no quarter in his mind; his only thought was of his musket and bayonet.
Mortally determined, Harley closed the distance to the wagon faster than he'd ever run before. He was closer to the wagon than his pursuer was to him; he saw the specter was fifteen feet away. He was going to make it.
Ten feet. Five feet. Harley reached out ahead of him. He would grab the rifle and run that bastard through with his bayonet again. Panting and out of breath, he reached over the side of the wagon and wrapping his fingers around the gun.
But then Galen grabbed Harley's wrist.
Harley's heart stopped briefly as he let out a terrified, pathetic yelp. He kept his grip on the rifle, but Harley couldn’t wrestle his arm free from Galen’s grasp.
&nbs
p; But Galen's concentration broke; he saw something in the back of the wagon staring back at him.
It was the dead body of a Mexican man, his boots familiarly stripped, his throat cut from ear to ear.
Harley sensed his brief advantage and tugged his arm, breaking Galen's grip. But before he could pull the rifle out of the wagon, his chin was smashed by Galen's fist. Harley’s knees buckled and he went down hard, slamming his already stunned chin against a wagon wheel. Galen reached down and grabbed the hillbilly by the collar and pulled him closer, thrusting his blade up to Harley’s face.
“Who's that in back?” Galen asked, jerking a thumb toward the wagon. “This the knife you used on him, too?”
Harley’s mind scrambled. With a sharp kick, he struck Galen's knee, connecting harder than he had expected. Galen recoiled from the blow. Three feet away, Harley spotted possible freedom: a large, jagged rock. Desperately, he lunged towards it across the dirt it—but was stopped by the boot Galen firmly planted in his back.
Galen reached down and grabbed a handful of the hillbilly’s greasy hair.
“That was her husband, wasn’t it?” he asked. “They were just going about their business and you preyed on them like animals.”
“You don’ unner-stand!” Harley cried, his eyes widening as Galen pulled harder on his hair. “Besides, you’re dead! You a ghost. You cain’t kill me!”
When Galen raised the knife to cut Harley’s throat, there was a sudden flash before his eyes. Instead of the hillbilly, Galen was holding a handful of hair belonging to the young girl from Veracruz as he prepared to scalp her. Then her face turned upward and greeted him with a bone-chilling grin.
But as quickly as it had arrived, the flash was over—the vision gone.
Galen let out a sharp breath, as if struck. He released the hillbilly’s hair, causing Harley’s chin to smack hard against the ground.
Galen turned away, still reeling.
“Why th’ hell do you care so much? They just a bunch of stinkin’ Mexicans!” Harley shouted. “You cain’t kill me over a bunch of them people!”
Galen turned back.
“I’m not gonna kill you,” he said. “But I can’t vouch for the rest of the creatures in these woods.”
And without hesitation, Galen plunged the knife into the middle of Harley’s back, severing the hillbilly’s spine in two. Harley screamed, now paralyzed below the waist.
“Gol-damnit! You sumbitch!” the hillbilly shrieked at Galen, spitting in anger and agony. “I’m gonna curse you to judgment day!”
“No you’re not,” Galen told him, flipping Harley over onto his back.
Galen walked away, wiping the blood from his hands onto the tattered remains of his shirt. In his palm, he held a pink nubbin of flesh that was still warm and wet from the hillbilly’s mouth. He looked down at it in disgust and pitched Harley’s severed tongue over his shoulder. The animals would smell the fresh meat and find it soon enough. The same went for Harley.
Galen rushed back to the hill hoping it wasn’t too late. There she lied, motionless—her bloodstained face looking upward to the sky.
I didn’t make it, he thought. But just then she coughed. Her head turned slightly to him—her eyes still pleading, though fading fast. With what little energy she had left, she raised her hand and reached out to him.
*****
CHAPTER 13
The rattling of the heavy vehicle over the dirt road notwithstanding, Galen and Maria—that’s what he had taken to calling her, although he had no idea if this was correct—had been riding in silence.
She had not been able to make any indication to the contrary. Her last sound came when she had been quite near death. In her delirium approached a specter in bloody and torn clothing. With the sun to his back, he indeed appeared to be a space ringed with a bright halo of light—an angel, come to take her to heaven. Upon this, she audibly accepted her mortal fate.
But instead of ascending with her up into the sky, the specter knelt down on the ground and forced her mouth open with one hand and into it emptied the contents of a paper cartridge with the other. The black powder burned her mouth Her body bucked uncontrollably trying to purge the awful contents, but Galen kept a hand sturdily clamped over her lips to prevent her from prematurely spitting out what he had put in there.
“This is gonna prevent infection,” he repeated, not knowing if she could even understand him, whether they were separated linguistically or traumatically. He finally let her spit out the hastily conceived preventative. There was no further fight. Mercifully, within minutes she passed out from the pain.
Unsure if he had inadvertently pushed her over the threshold of death, Galen put his ear to her breast and listened for a heartbeat. When he brought his face against her chest and a shallow pulse, he noticed how warm she felt.
He lifted her up and carried her back to the wagon. Galen marveled at how light she felt, her body as slack as a rag doll. Placing her in the back of the wagon, he quickly lifted and moved the man the brothers killed into the woods. Her husband or not, she did not need to wake to that sight. Galen hitched up the remaining horse. At first the creature startled, but as Galen put his hand out to let the nag sniff it, he gained the horse’s immediate trust.
With both horses harnessed, Galen rode to pick up Blue and tethered him to the back of the wagon. Of course, the old thing hadn’t moved more than an inch from where Galen left him. Galen took checked the sun and headed east. The pace was slow—partly due to the old burro Galen refused to leave behind, but mostly because if the trailhead reappeared, he didn't want to miss it. Despite the laggard rate, Galen's feet were grateful for the respite.
During the first few hours he repeatedly stopped to check on Maria, who remained thankfully comatose; she’d surely awake to a world of ineffable pain.
As night began to fall, Galen found a clearing where he could safely build a fire and make camp. In the back of the wagon he found a blanket to put over the still-unconscious Maria. He also found clothing and food— what had to have been the extent of Maria and her presumable husband’s worldly possessions. It seemed to Galen as if the pair was off to make a new life.
Among the clothes, Galen found a shirt, which he reluctantly used to replace his current, bloody one. Galen’s mind quickly shot back to the final scene in the woods: paralyzed and mute, Harley had attempted to crawl into the woods, using just his arms to pull his useless legs. Galen placed Maria’s husband directly in the hillbilly’s path, giving the dying man full view of the Mexican man he and his brothers murdered in cold blood.
After he buttoned the dead man’s shirt, Galen grabbed a new pair of pants as well. Luckily, he had lost some weight since beginning his journey.
Galen fed the horses with handfuls of oats from a sack found in the back of the wagon; Blue, however, rejected the offering. Galen reckoned the old beast had grown used to a diet of jerky—a sorry fact for the both of them, since, because of Blue, he’d run out. He tied the horses up for the night and left Blue to wander, knowing the poor old thing wouldn’t stray too far.
After making a small fire, Galen finally sat and immediately felt the exhaustion closing in. In truth, he wasn’t sure how many times he could go through days like today; he knew, however, that his path would not be so cleanly completed, however.
Indeed, each return from the darkness left Galen just a little skewed—his journey a little offset from its previous course. As he was coming to comprehend—albeit incompletely—each return from the darkness resulted in slightly altered memories. Of course, he had no way to confirm that his current memories weren’t his previous memories, but this explanation was the only one he had for the time it took him to resituate himself in his own mind. As far as he could guess, some things would be forgotten and others revealed from the obscured uncertainty of the past. He still had no idea, however, what original past was that which was continually re-tooled and resituated.
***
It was the metal clang that wo
ke him up. A jarring noise one could never forget—for what it signified, or more precisely, what it signified about for its listener, was dire. So Galen had no choice—his instincts caused him to shoot upright when he heard the unmistakable sound of his jail door closing.
Galen found himself back in the stuffy jail cell in Sagebrush, Texas—disturbed from slumber in the middle of the night.
Standing before him, visible in the thin light of the moon shining through the barred window of his cell, was a tall man whose eyes only were illuminated. The gaze that was both cold and clear—like the sight of a star in the winter night.
“You the undertaker?” Galen said from his haze. “'Cuz some other man already come and measure me for—”
Galen stopped. He was suddenly aware that the man was asking him a question, although his mouth never moved, nor had any sound been made since that of the cell door.
“I didn't mean to fall asleep. I just—” Galen said, his voice trailing off when the man interrupted. Though he still didn't speak, Galen could hear the man's voice—that of a country rube—in his head.
“I don't underst— Yes, I know what day tomorrow is. I'm ready to go to the gallows,” Galen answered. “I'm quite tired.”
The man gave no reaction. His unwavering gaze continued to dissect Galen.
“Do I know you?” Galen finally asked, inching closer to dread. “I don't understand what you’re asking,” Galen responded to the voice in his head.
The question came to Galen once more.
“Of course I know who I am. But you still haven't told me who you a—” he answered though cut off again.
“I don't understand what you're say—”
“I'm Galen Altos!” he finally shouted. He covered his ears, but the inquisition continued.
“I don't understand! I told you: I am Galen Altos!”
“What do you mean ‘before that’? Before what?”
Galen shook his head. “I've always been Galen Altos!” he cried. “I don't understand! Before what?”
With that the man's mouth opened slightly, his thin lips breaking into a cruel grin.
Shadow Falls: Badlands Page 11
