Black Wind Pass

by Rusty Davis

  Jessie had last been on Lazy F land some five years previously, so the day after Jackson Jones was killed, when it seemed that there would be a time of relative peace until his funeral in a few days, it was agreed she would go—unchaperoned, by her own very firm statement to Reb—to see the ranch. She would stay three days and return. Reb glowered at this latest affront to all she held dear, but said little. She barely had words for Carrick, although from the looks she threw him, there was much on her mind. He once thought about trying to breach the wall growing between them, but decided in the end that he didn’t have the right words and that Reb would do what she wanted no matter what.

  For Carrick, the rhythm of ranch life was a welcome return to the life he had not known in ten years. He stayed close to the house, fixing broken things that hadn’t had a carpenter’s attention in many years. It felt good. The work may not have been physically demanding, but it was engrossing. He did not scan the horizon for riders every time he left the barn or walked around the corner of the house.

  Even when he should have.

  This time he came out of the barn after putting new wood on the roof so it wouldn’t leak—much. Instead of unbroken landscape, a man stood there, waiting. Not any man. A man who had come a long way on a mission of revenge, and who now radiated the feral pleasure a predator feels when its prey has entered a carefully prepared trap. Carrick had known that feeling. Now it was his turn to be on the receiving end.

  “Hello, Uriah.”

  “Carrick.”

  Uriah Saunders was taller and thinner than Carrick with a narrow face behind a full mustache. Malice glittered in dark eyes; satisfaction in the slight smile that revealed yellow teeth. Greasy brown hair flowed neatly from under a black hat. The man’s face was trail-worn. A soft leather holster around his hips was black, as was the richly tailored suit he wore, with black boots and a shiny silver and black vest. The star he wore shone in the morning sunlight.

  “Biggest star you could find, Uriah?”

  “Glad you noticed it, Carrick. Star means I’m the law. Sworn by the town of Carmichael, Texas, to find you.”

  “Carrick? Are you so busy with whatever you’re doing that you can’t answer when I ask you a simple question?” Reb’s querulous voice reached him as she rounded the corner from behind the barn.

  The man in black pulled two long-barreled revolvers. One covered Carrick; the other, an exasperated and now-stunned Reb, who carried a pail of milk. “Cozy, ain’t we?”

  “Keep her out of this, Uriah.”

  “Man has a wife, man should protect her. That’s the way it is. Man has a brother, man should do right by his brother. That’s also the way it is, you murderer.”

  “Man’s brother deserved to die, Uriah. World’s a better place without him.”

  “Abigail and the kids don’t think so.”

  “She marries anybody it will be a better life. He would have done dirt to her in the end. How’d you find me?”

  “Kansas folks wired me back in the winter after that little to-do in Abilene. Somebody knew you. I went up there. Lost you a while after that. Winter set in. Wyoming Territory was about my last hope. Knew you came from up here somewhere. Came up in the spring. I was at Fort Laramie when a man at Lincoln Springs sent word to them, sayin’ some hard case rode into the valley. The man wanted to know if there was an outlaw named Carrick with a price on his head. Told myself there ain’t two Carricks in Wyoming, so I came to see what I could see. Soon, there ain’t gonna be one. Alive.”

  Carrick reached out his arms in front of him, joined his hands and cracked his knuckles. It ended here. Two years on the run; now it was ending. One way or the other. It was like the feeling that day at Shiloh. Enough waiting. Get it over with. His hands swung at his sides, inches from his holstered pistol. He had wondered how fast he was. Now, he’d find out.

  Uriah waited, clearly hoping Carrick would reach for a gun. They waited each other out in silence until the pressure of the stillness made Reb speak. “Carrick, what’s this about?” Reb had been restrained, for her. Uriah’s deadly presence dominated even her.

  “You never told your woman?”

  “I work for her; she’s not my wife.”

  “Carrick, I bet she’d like to know the story anyhow.” He turned to Reb. “Uriah Saunders, miss. My brother Zekeriah was in the proud service of the Confederate States of America. When the war ended and he was honorably paroled, he came back, peacefully, to our ranch in Carmichael, Texas. He married. Had a family. About two years ago, he was murdered.”

  “Not murder to kill the likes of him. Call it justice. I promised my men I’d even it and I did.”

  The gun pointed at Carrick trembled. “What you did . . . was unholy.”

  “Me and God don’t think so.” The gun traveled down Carrick’s body.

  “In the guts. One shot. How long will it take, Carrick?”

  “Long enough for me to have time to kill you and you know it. Start the ball, Uriah. It’s a good day for it.”

  Uriah’s gun clicked. “What . . . what happened? I don’t know what any of this is about!” Reb wanted to keep Uriah talking. Carrick was acting like a fool. As long as the man in black talked, he could be distracted. Carrick was acting as though he wanted to be shot!

  “This man . . .” the gun gestured again, but was no longer cocked. “This man rode up to my brother’s farm. He dragged the man in front of his wife and children and forced him to tell lies.”

  “The truth, Uriah! The things he did at Andersonville that were unspeakable! How much he enjoyed his work! How he watched men die and bet with the guards who would die on which day!”

  Uriah’s face was contorted in hatred. Reb despaired. Carrick was all but dead. She cleared her throat. The man in black focused on her again and resumed the story. “When it was done, he shot him to death right through the belly and let him die slowly. The man died hearing his wife and kids screaming!”

  Reb was revolted. Carrick looked defiant. “Guess I was a mite easy on him, now that you tell it so pretty,” he said.

  The hammer clicked. “No!” screamed Reb.

  The man’s eyes shifted back, focusing on Reb. She had never felt so much evil in a man; and now it was focused on her. She froze. This was death.

  “Maybe you’re right, little lady. Maybe you should die first, so he can see everything he loves die. That would be a better punishment than him dying. Maybe . . .”

  Carrick reached for his gun. Uriah turned back to Carrick and fired once before a pail of warm cloudy liquid spread across him, blinding him. He fired both guns. Carrick’s weapon blasted. One shot clanged off of the milk pail. One or both men exclaimed in pain as shots hit home. Reb rolled on the ground after throwing the milk pail at Uriah, the way Aunt Jess taught her to do if she was ever in town when drunk cowboys started shooting. A few seconds and a lot more shots later, it was quiet.

  Reb rose, shaking. The white pool around Uriah’s twitching body was deeply tinged with red. Reb kicked the gun from his hand; he had been struggling to thumb back the hammer in the final moments of his life. The man had four red holes in him. She ran to Carrick. He was slumped up against the barn in a position of the badly injured. Three holes in the wood above his head showed where Uriah had missed. Not all the shots had gone wide. There was red at Carrick’s lips. He was breathing hard. The gun in his hand, though, was steady and trained on Uriah.

  “Dead?” Blood sprayed. It dripped down Carrick’s chin. Some sprayed onto Reb’s face, inches away.

  “He’s dead, Carrick. He’s dead!” Reb felt hysteria rising. Carrick looked to be dying as well. “Where are you hit?”

  “Andersonville.”

  “What? Carrick. Don’t move. Sit here and do nothing. I got to find the bullets. Don’t talk. It doesn’t matter.”

  His hand gripped her forearm. “Brother. Guard. At Andersonville. Two years to find him. I owed my men.” Carrick’s head sagged and reeled. “What he did. He had to pay. Don’t think b
ad . . . of me . . . Reb? It ain’t that big a sin to rid the world of a killer. Remind God, will you, Reb?”

  “Shush, Carrick.”

  “Storm comin’ Reb. Cold wind. It’s getting’ dark.”

  “Carrick, I said it don’t matter. Where are you shot?”

  “Reb.” It was a whisper. The hand still gripped. “I . . . for you. Sweet . . . L-l—”

  He slid even further down the wall of the barn until he was limp. She could see behind him the red trail on the unpainted barn that a bullet near his ribs had passed through him, taking a chunk of muscle with it before lodging in the wood. His face had been grazed. That was the source of the blood in his mouth. She kept looking.

  The other trail of blood was lower. She took off his shirt and threw the soggy mess by the dead Texan.

  A bullet was in Carrick’s abdomen. The red, oozing crater was not deep. She thought she could see the bullet when she pushed apart the muscle. He moaned but otherwise did not react as she probed. Aunt Jess knew about treating gunshot wounds, but she wasn’t here. There was nobody else. She had dug bullets out of the fence posts more than a few times but the wood didn’t bleed all over. It couldn’t be that much different. She started hauling him indoors. She lit a lantern to see.

  Carrick watched as the moon danced. Up and down. Around. Carrick always wanted to see it do something different than just hang in the sky. He wondered if it was standing still and he was flying. He recalled looking up when they told him, as a child, someone was heading to heaven. Never did see anyone. It was hot; he was burning. There was fire. Fire everywhere. From his arms to his hips, there was fire. The angel bending over him must have kissed him. Angels did that. Too much fire. Everything tinged red. He tried to move and tell her. She was saying something. A formless noise surrounded him. He was starting to recognize it was his voice when it was swallowed in black.

  Rebecca Lewis looked at the lump on the floor that refused to die or live. For three days, since she had operated on him by the light of the lantern, Carrick had breathed in and breathed out, barely. The scream that came from the depths of his pain when she dug out the bullet had been the last noise he made. It made it easier sewing him up to know he wasn’t going to move. Then the long wait began. She milked the cows, fed the animals, and watched Carrick. She had ate something yesterday. Or the day before.

  Foolish cowboy, she thought, pushing back that lock of hair that always fell into her eyes. Taking on a man with a gun drawn because he threatened her. Fool! Half of her said she could have talked her way out; the other half reminded her how close she had been to evil and death. She realized that Carrick had not cared about his own survival, but had risked his life to save her. She didn’t like thinking that way. It made her cry, and she hated crying. She touched his face. It was cold. She put another blanket over him. The wound on his face was superficial; the one in his side would hurt, if he lived. The one in his gut was the one that worried her. That must have been the first shot; Carrick had not missed after that—the other man had.

  She’d buried the Texas lawman in the yard where the dirt and debris were piled. He had a fat wallet. That made her about as cash rich as she had ever been in her life. He also had a letter. It was soggy with milk and blood, but it said a man named Carrick was in the valley and that he might be wanted for something. She did not know who wrote it. It was a puzzle for either after she buried Carrick or after he lived. She watched him again. If there was a change, she couldn’t see it. She had been praying so long she had run out of words beyond “Please.” And he was going to die!

  In that moment, she felt filthy with blood and death and failure. She needed to be clean; she needed to be in the daylight. She needed the touch of the Wyoming wind and to feel the waters of the creek. She looked again at Carrick. She stood up, grabbed a few things from the room she shared with Aunt Jess, and strode out. He could sleep forever or die the next second. She needed what she needed right then. She did the best she could for a man who had never said if she mattered to him. “God, you watch him until I get back,” she said. “I tried. I can’t watch him die. I can’t watch.”

  She saddled Arthur and rode.

  Her hair was wet, still, when she returned. The blood-fouled shirt was past cleaning, so she left it by the creek. She wore a new one—one Aunt Jess gave her to wear at some silly thing when she wanted her to meet cowboys. Look how that was turning out. With the sun and wind and clean water on her head she felt closer to alive. She’d make something to eat. Maybe smelling food would wake him up. She’d make coffee. That brought cowboys to life.

  She flung open the door. The hammer of a gun greeted her with its telltale click.

  She froze. The darkness of the house was too dim for her eyes. “Carrick?” A noise. “Carrick?”

  “Reb?” It was a croaking half-dead voice, but it was her name he croaked. Carrick was not on the floor. She walked in.

  “It’s me, Carrick. Reb. I had to breathe something that wasn’t dyin’.”

  “Not dead. Not yet. Promised. Reb?”

  Her eyes were adjusting. She found him in a corner, propped against the walls, .45 in his hands. Two very unsteady hands.

  “Cowboy, if that goes off you’ll kill the only one around here that’s been nursing you. Come on. Lie on the blankets.”

  “You? Hurt?” There was panic in the wavy tones of his cracked voice. His legs tried to get up.

  She touched his cheek softly. “Shhh,” she said. “I’m fine. He’s dead. Shhh.” He stopped struggling. “Everything would be fine if some fool cowboy would lie down and not point a gun at me. Girl never likes that kind of thing in a man. Now, put that down or give it to me and get back to the bed I made for you.”

  How a half-dead man could make a pile of blankets disappear, she could not imagine. He had. After gingerly taking the gun away from him, she helped him struggle to his feet. He staggered sideways and then collapsed across Aunt Jess’s bed with a moan. He kept reaching for a gun on his hip. He was alive and ready to kill. Guess that’s about normal, she thought, smiling at the man as he went to sleep almost as soon as he hit the bed.

  Carrick slept the rest of the day and the night. She heard him stumbling in the morning while she was hanging a pot by the fire to boil water.

  “Carrick, would you stay in one place and not bleed all over the floor? Somebody has to clean the place.”

  A grin from a swaying figure in the doorway answered her. He would live. “Uriah?”

  “Dead and buried. I told you but you didn’t hear.” She read his face. “No. Not with your kin. Over by the manure pile.”

  “Good place. Talk later,” he said. “I need coffee.”

  “Lie down, you fool!” He would not. He insisted on walking into the kitchen, wobbly as a foal. He groaned when he more fell than sat. Then he got up and went to the door, opened it, and looked outside, leaning on the door frame. He stood unaided for a moment.

  “Never looked better.”

  “The land or you? Got me some thoughts on that second subject if you’re of a mind to hear them.”

  There was a grin as he turned. “Not fair, pesterin’ a man when he’s been almost dead.” A pause. “Maybe I was talkin’ about you, Reb. We got things to say. I recall hearin’ stuff when I was out I don’t rightly know if I heard or not.”

  “Think real careful about what to say unless you want to get shot again, cowboy.” She knew how often she had told him she needed him to live, and how often she urged him not to die. “Girl doesn’t want to hear about what a man thinks he heard. Girl doesn’t want to waste time digging graves when she’s got the work of two people to do because one of ’em’s lying around bleedin’.” But she was smiling.

  When there was coffee and the biscuits were ready, he ate. She could see life returning to his eyes and his manner.

  “Guess I need to thank you.”

  “Always wanted to dig bullets out of someone, and never had me a volunteer before, so no need to mention it.” She grinn
ed.

  “You got questions?”

  “You really do what that man said?”

  Carrick looked uncomfortable. He stared down at his hands a long, silent moment. “I did. Uriah’s brother was an officer at Andersonville. He ordered men shot; let men die of thirst; starvation; disease. Some fellas there had a conscience. Uriah’s brother was one of those men who likes to see other men suffer. Evil. After the war ended, I was in the hospital until almost ’66. Weighed ninety-one pounds when Andersonville was liberated. Some disease; forget the name. Probably should have been dead. Once I could walk, I tracked him. I promised the men I was captured with—a lot of ’em died—I would make him pay.

  “Caught up with him in Texas in ’68. I killed him in front of everyone that mattered to him, to show them what he really was. All I could think of was killing. It was wrong. I know it was wrong. That’s what obsession does to a man—makes him think wrong is right. When it was done, I had no purpose. I wasn’t even smart enough to light out. Uriah was the town sheriff. I got arrested and locked up. I escaped—well, I pretty much walked away from the room they had as a jail—because he was going to make sure I hung. Don’t think Uriah’s brother was too popular or I would have gotten hung right away. Uriah has looked for me ever since I escaped.”

  “What did you do afterwards?”

  “Nothin’ I’m very proud to talk about,” he said. “All that time I was gonna even the score and when it was done, all I did was kill somebody else. I tried to give up carin’ after that. Made my way in the world as a man with a gun. Not much of a way to live but I wasn’t askin’ for much. I got out of Texas and spent most of the time in Kansas. There was always work for a man with a gun in Kansas what with all the wild cowboys coming up the trail. Abilene last fall. Fella wanted to fight. We went out in the street. Little kid got away from his mom. Got killed by a stray bullet. Not mine, but when that happened, I got sick of it—sick of it all. Hadn’t thought about this place more than stray thoughts on bad days. Afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I rode out for here. Winter slowed me down, but I got here.”