As he buttoned the light-colored linen shirt, he saw fresh blood already soaking through the cloth. He tucked the shirt into his pants and put on the dark vest, hoping that would be enough to hide it. He almost tossed the coat aside, because the day was already too hot. But then he remembered he was in the desert. If he lived through the rest of today, by tonight he’d be getting damn cold.
The last man he’d killed was wearing leather stovepipe chaps that looked almost new. He took them and buckled them on to cover his torn pants. He sized the sole of the stranger’s boot up against his foot; it was a decent match. He pushed his sore feet into the man’s socks and boots, beginning to feel like at least he might pass for respectable now.
Hat, he thought. If he died of sunstroke now, it would serve him right. He picked up the hat he liked best and tried it on. It fit just right. He settled the brim low over his eyes, shielding them from the light and other people’s curiosity.
He wondered exactly what other people he had in mind . . . suddenly he remembered the tintype he had found. Retrieving it from his pocket, he took off the hat and carefully wedged the picture into its crown. He resettled the hat on his head, satisfied.
But there was still one thing he needed: a gun.
He moved from body to body again, checking out the men’s pistols. They all had decent-looking revolvers. Good. . . . He spun the cylinder of each one, rejected the first two because the movement wasn’t smooth enough.
The third one was better: an army-surplus Smith and Wesson Schofield .45. Its cylinder moved like its owner had cared about his own life. Better luck in the next one, the man thought. The gun’s grip felt easy, well-balanced in his hand.
He took the gun belt that came with it and buckled it on. Whoever he was, the pistol made him feel complete in a way he couldn’t define.
Then he gazed out across the bleak, glaringly bright plain, feeling more like himself again. He realized that the thought was as completely out of context as he was, standing here in the middle of nowhere . . . and just as meaningless.
He checked over the three horses that stood grazing alongside the trail, waiting for riders who no longer had any use for them. They were all in good condition; he chose the only one without a scalp hanging from its saddle. He fastened the coat onto the back of the saddle, where a bedroll was already tied in place. He slapped the other two horses on the rumps and sent them galloping off down the road, trusting their intelligence to take them someplace better than this.
Still following his own instincts, he mounted the third horse and turned it in the direction the three men had been traveling. Absolution. He figured it had to be a town, and in that case, not impossibly far away. He touched the horse with his spurs. It set off at an easy lope, a pace his body didn’t find unbearable.
As he started to ride away, the dog got up and followed him. He reined in, looking back at it. Some kind of herding dog, he guessed. Its fur was long and shaggy, mostly black, with a white ruff around its neck that made it look like it’d been born with a collar on.
Maybe it had, because whatever kind of dog it was, it didn’t seem to have the sense to go off on its own, now that it was free. It looked back at him, panting with its tongue out, in that way dogs had that made them seem to be smiling.
He stared at it with the eyes of a cougar, passing judgment. Then he turned away again and rode on, not looking back.
The dog followed as he crested the next hill and rode into the valley beyond.
2
Absolution was just a place, not a state of mind. The man only had to ride for half a day to reach it.
Beyond the rise of one more hill, he saw the town waiting for him in the wide valley below. He saw cottonwood and willow trees, and some brighter greens that looked like they might be permanent—signs that the silver band of river running through the valley bottom was a reliable water source.
He was surprised by the number of buildings he could see lined up along Absolution’s main street; a couple of cross streets branched off it like veins of ore. Veins of gold: A gold strike was the only thing he knew that could pull enough people together to build a town this size, in the middle of a godforsaken wasteland.
He slowed his horse to a walk well before he reached the town limits, giving himself more time to take in details about what he was riding into.
Absolution wasn’t the town it had appeared to be from a distance. Even though it was well into afternoon now, the dusty main street was almost deserted. The buildings along it had been put up to last, but the paint on most of them was faded and peeling, blistered by the desert sun. More than one looked abandoned: Whoever had built this town in the first place had given up and left it awhile ago.
Another boom town gone bust, because the gold its founders thought would last forever had run out long before their expectations. It wasn’t a ghost town yet, but the people who still lived here were only staying because they had no place better to go.
As far as he could tell, none of that had anything to do with him—except that an empty street in broad daylight made a stranger riding into town a lot more conspicuous.
Something, maybe long habit, told him he didn’t want to be noticed, at least not until he’d remembered who he was. He pressed a hand to his wounded side, and then he turned the horse off the main track, circling around behind the row of buildings; looking for one that seemed to be occupied, preferably with an open back door.
To his surprise, he found what he was looking for without having to search for long. He dismounted behind a building with a fairly fresh coat of white paint on its clapboards; the back door was wide open to let in whatever breeze happened by.
He spotted a rain barrel under a downspout near the back steps—lidded against the heat, and still half full. His horse required a lot more water than he did; anybody who forgot that might as well blow his own brains out, because he’d be dead soon enough anyway, along with his horse. The man let the horse drink, and then looped a rein over the railing of the steps to make sure it stayed there.
Definitely not expecting visitors, he thought as he climbed the steps and went in through the open door. It was only then that he noticed the damn dog had followed him all the way to town, as it appeared in the doorway behind him, gazing up at him with wide brown eyes and that mindless smile.
The realization struck him that the dog was just doing the same thing he’d been trying to do: survive, when its whole life had been pulled out from under it. By him. Resigned, he pointed at the floor. “Stay,” he said. The dog sat down in the doorway and stayed there, satisfied.
The man took a longer look around, not able to tell what kind of place this was, but seeing what looked like a small kitchen ahead of him . . . and a bottle of whiskey sitting on a table beside the sink. The thought of that appealed to him, and he moved ahead cautiously.
“Hello—?” he called out, not too loudly, not wanting to be caught by surprise if somebody was in the next room, but not wanting to bring them running, either.
There was no answer, no sound of footsteps. Relaxing, he reached the table and the half-full bottle of whiskey sitting on it. He uncorked it and drank several long swallows, enjoying the burn.
The “water of life”—that was what “whiskey” meant, according to Dolan. Right now he believed it. It didn’t even bother him that he had no idea who Dolan was.
He set the bottle down with a satisfied sigh, and moved to the sink. Working the pump handle, he got the water flowing until he’d filled the bowl he found there. He plunged his hands into the cool water; it felt good on his bruised, abraded knuckles.
But he needed to clean himself up. He took off his hat and splashed the water on his face, rubbing off sweat and dust, before he did the same to his hands and arms. Leaning forward, he dumped the rest of the water over his head to rinse off his hair. He used the dry dishrag he found on the table to finish up the job.
Just doing that much left him feeling shaky and in more pain from his wound than he�
��d been when he arrived. He began to unbutton his vest. His wound still needed tending; even lifting a liquor bottle made the now-constant pain in his side worse. He pulled up his shirt and poured whiskey into the deep, bloody gash, clenching his teeth. The burn it set off in his wound felt familiar, but a hell of a lot less pleasant that the one in his throat and belly.
He took another long swig of whisky, set the bottle down on the table, reached for the cork . . . and froze in mid-motion, as he heard a rifle cocked behind him.
“Palms to heaven, friend,” a voice said.
Slowly the man raised his hands.
PREACHER MEACHAM APPROACHED the stranger he’d found in his kitchen, drinking his whiskey, with considerable wariness. Few people came to call these days, and of those who did, none used the back door—or drank his whiskey without an invitation.
“Easy, now . . .” the man said, as Meacham pressed the muzzle of the rifle against the man’s neck.
As Meacham removed the pistol from the stranger’s holster, he felt more than saw the man’s muscles grow taut and twitch. He realized that the man had let him take the pistol.
He took a deep breath, thanking God, as he stepped back again. “Turn around,” he said.
The stranger turned around. Meacham saw the man sizing him up, the same way he was taking the man’s measure; saw the intensely blue eyes catch on his graying hair and beard, his unremarkable clothing. Without his official preacher’s hat and coat, he supposed he looked like any other townsman. The man looked up at him again.
His stare gave the blue eyes pause. He might be getting on in years, but those years had taught him a lot of lessons. Meacham was a man who’d seen a lot in his life, and done a lot, before he’d found God, or God had found him. The lessons he’d learned still showed in his eyes, proving that he hadn’t forgotten any of them.
Looking the stranger over, he saw a man in his mid-thirties, a hard man whose gaze was as impenetrable as diamond. But most men who lived for long out here came to look like that. The clothes the man had on were mostly dark, and as unremarkable as his own, in these parts. It was only the telltale way he moved, or chose not to, that made Meacham suspect he was anything but ordinary.
But the man had surrendered his gun without a fight, and Meacham was sure he’d had a choice about that. He looked at the sizable blood stain on the man’s light-colored shirt, which was untucked from his pants and dripping good whiskey on the floor.
“Been shot,” the man said, as if it was all he could think to say.
Meacham forgave the stranger any whiskey he’d used for medicinal purposes. He wondered if the stranger had come here wanting more than a drink. From the look of him, he needed more than a drink. But the man didn’t say anything else, just stood looking at Meacham like he’d decided at least that standing still hadn’t been a mistake.
Out of the corner of his eye, Meacham saw a black dog, one he’d never seen before, sitting patiently just beyond the doorway. Most of the dog’s body was still in sunlight, but it made no attempt to come further in out of the heat. Something about the way the dog sat reminded him of how the stranger now stood. His own tension eased just a little, but his curiosity only got stronger.
“Only two kinds of men get shot,” Meacham observed, “criminals and victims.” He carefully set the man’s pistol down, well out of reach. “Well,” he asked, when the man still said nothing, “which one are you?”
The man hesitated a moment before answering, as if he had to think about it. “. . . I don’t know,” he muttered finally.
Meacham heard truth in the man’s voice. And for just a moment, as he’d said the words, the stranger’s face had looked completely empty, lost . . . terrified. The man blinked, and the moment of vulnerability vanished. But Meacham had seen enough. Lord have mercy, he thought. A truly lost soul. “Got a name, brother?”
The man looked down. “Don’t know that either.”
Sympathy almost forced its way onto Meacham’s face. But he’d lived too long to be scooped in that easily. “What do you know?”
The stranger looked up again, after a pause. “English,” he said, deadpan.
Meacham raised his eyebrows, this time letting a faint smile show. But he still kept the rifle up, ensuring that the man kept his hands in the air. “Where’d you ride in from?” he asked.
The stranger glanced away. “. . . west.”
“That’s a big place,” Meacham said mildly, “‘. . . west.’”
The man ignored that, and Meacham nodded at the doorway he’d come through, indicating that the stranger should go through it, first.
Obediently the man stepped forward, pushed his way through the swinging door with his hands still up.
Meacham followed close behind, still carrying the rifle. “Take a seat.”
The man looked around the large, high-ceilinged room, back at Meacham, with something like confusion. “This your place?” he asked.
The room was mostly shuttered, cooler but darker than the kitchen, and Meacham remembered that it wasn’t necessarily a familiar sight to most men’s eyes. “Six days a week it is,” he said, and this time he did smile. “On the seventh, it belongs to the Lord.”
Comprehension dawned in the stranger’s eyes, as he looked out over the rows of pews, back at the pulpit, and the large, plain cross hanging on the wall behind it. He sat down in a pew at the front; as he did, another stab of pain made his mouth thin. But his gaze followed Meacham, as the preacher moved toward a table at one side of the room, where the afternoon sun shone in through one of the few unshuttered windows.
The man’s restless eyes went back to exploring the room with the frank curiosity of someone who couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the inside of a church.
In this case, Meacham realized, that could be literally true. He let down his guard another notch. “My name’s Meacham,” he said, by way of introduction. Quietly he laid the rifle on the table beside him. He noticed that the man picked up even that slight sound.
The stranger, glancing at Meacham, lowered his hands. His face stayed calm, his eyes showing only faint relief. He didn’t move from his seat. Meacham turned his back as he went to the cupboard where he kept his assortment of medical supplies, and a spare bottle of whiskey. He brought the box and the whiskey back to the table.
“Woke up in the desert,” the man said, volunteering information for the first time. “Like I dropped out of the sky.”
Meacham looked up from sorting through the supplies. “Well now,” he said, “I certainly recall one such story happening before . . . fella by the name of Lucifer.”
The stranger blinked, as if he recognized that name, knew the story it belonged to. But there was nothing more to his reaction, as if hearing any name but his own seemed useless to him, and that one wasn’t it.
“Come into the light,” Meacham said, an invitation as much as an order. He wet his hands with the whiskey, and wiped them on a clean cloth. The man stood up, a little stiffly; something close to genuine relief showed in his eyes as he came toward the table, seeing Meacham’s preparations.
Meacham took out a threaded needle and gestured for the man to sit on the table in the light. The stranger obeyed him, lying back and pulling up his shirt as if he knew what to expect.
Meacham gave the man a drink of whiskey from the bottle on the table, then took one himself. Sewing up a damaged human body wasn’t like darning socks; it was one thing he never found to be a soothing activity. He lit a match and ran the needle through the flame to sterilize it, before he looked at the wound. His forehead furrowed, and he took another swig from the bottle. The man put up his hand, reaching for the whiskey again, but Meacham had already set it down. “Try’n hold still. . . .”
He ran the hot needle through the stranger’s skin, starting to stitch the sides of the wound together. The man’s upraised hand knotted into a fist; his jaw clenched over a sound of pain. But then he held his body perfectly still and didn’t make another sound as
Meacham went on stitching him up.
It was a relief to work on a man with some self-control, Meacham thought. He was too used to patching up drunken victims of bar brawls, who generally wailed and thrashed like overgrown three-year-olds.
“. . . mining town?” the stranger asked finally, his voice held under tight control, like his body. Talking to take his mind off the pain, now, Meacham thought, all the more convinced that some part of this man’s brain knew things that maybe no one would want to remember.
“Yeah, that was the notion. Ore played out, like water sinking into sand . . . ,” Meacham said, shaking his head. “No gold, no town. Most everyone moved on to the new diggings in the Mimbres Range.” He stopped stitching, staring at the wound, as he realized he’d never really seen a bullet wound—any kind of wound—that looked like this before. “Odd wound,” he said. “Looks . . . cauterized.” That had to be the only reason the man hadn’t passed out from blood loss somewhere on the trail. “This isn’t a gun shot.” He was certain of that now. “Where’d you get it?”
The stranger glared up at him, tight-lipped.
“Right: you don’t remember.” Meacham grimaced apologetically, and went on stitching. “Well, I can’t absolve you of your sins if you don’t recall ‘em,” he said, doing his best to keep on distracting the man as well. “That bein’ said—” he met the stranger’s eyes with a smile in his own, like sunlight reflecting in water, “whether you end up in Heaven or Hell, it’s not God’s plan . . . it’s your own.”
He looked down again and took two more stitches before he pulled the thread taut. He cut the thread with his teeth. “You just gotta remember what it is.” He finished his sermon and glanced up at the man again. “Finger?”
The man obliged, putting his finger on the knot to hold it, while Meacham tied it off.
Meacham stood back, admiring his work. “Not too bad for a country preacher—”
A window exploded beside the church’s front door; both men jumped. The sounds of gunfire and whooping and hollering came uninvited through the broken panes, destroying the peaceful refuge the church had been a moment before.
Cowboys and Aliens Page 2
