Gabriel tried to wrench his hand free. He punched at Marshall with his other hand, but the man’s eyes stayed on the field, following Ben.
He had spent the bullets of one gun. He let it drop and pulled the trigger of the other pistol, the one pressed against Gabriel’s flesh. The boy felt an explosion of pain that began in his hand but ripped through the rest of his body like an electric shock. He collapsed beneath it, rolling on his back and holding his hand by the wrist before him, staring at its trembling, blood-red image against the gray sky. He was aware that Marshall was standing up and emptying the second pistol, but he knew of Ben’s escape because of the man’s response.
“Goddamn the little chigger! He’s fast as a monkey, he is.” He yanked Gabriel to his feet. “Get up, you, and stop your wailing.” He pushed Gabriel forward and stepped toward the box.
Only then did Gabriel get some sense of purpose back. He circled around the man and motioned that he would still carry the box. He got the fingers of his good hand under it and, using his foot and then his elbow, hefted it up. Marshall commented that he mustn’t be hurt too bad, then walked behind him the rest of the way to the house, reloading the pistols along the way. Caleb was standing in the doorway to greet them.
THE YOUNGER BROTHER RAN OVER THE RISE and on to the west. Before long his lungs were scorched by the effort, his legs numb and exhausted. His breathing came in deep, labored gasps, and his ears rang with the sounds his body made as he flew into the wind. But it was none of these things that finally stopped him. It was the recollection, sudden and complete, of why he was running, and what that meant for those he loved. He slowed, stumbled over something, then sprawled on the grass, still clutching the rifle.
At first the boy just lay in the grass, so shocked that he could form no clear thought but felt only a jumble of emotions that he fought not to believe. He didn’t know these men. He’d never spoken to them or heard their voices or looked closely into their eyes. How could he know what was the right thing to do? He didn’t even know how many of them there were. He’d seen two horses, but . . . Maybe they just wanted the money. They might ride off at any second . . . But there was no money. They weren’t riding anywhere. They had already shot his uncle. They had shown themselves for what they were. He knew his brother had not yet told him the full extent of their evil, and now they had come to show them all.
He had to speak to himself in simple words, clearly, silently, to steady his mind. Think. Turn and go back. He must do something, for he couldn’t wait for them to do what they would. He tried to tell himself that his actions would not open a window to chaos. That window was already open. All he could do was try to close it. He had a glimpse of a world without those he loved, and the wave of anguish it sent through him was enough to send him to his feet. He would have to find a way, and he could run no farther than this very spot on the plains.
As he turned, his eyes fell on the thing that had tripped him. There in the tall grass were the sun-weathered bones of some creature’s skeleton. His mind immediately conjured up morbid images of a dead human, but almost as quickly his eyes noticed the ragged fur that cloaked some of the mass, the curves of an animal rib cage, and the long muzzle that could only be canine. Rows of incisors still clung to the jaw, but the flesh all about them and the rest of the bones had been cleaned almost completely, pulled at, no doubt, by vultures, and eaten by maggots, and attacked by various other creatures seen and unseen by the human eye.
His eyes rose and combed the grass nearby as if he expected to see burial markers. There was nothing, only the dry grass and the warm wind from the south and the cloudy sky. He turned his gaze toward the rise that separated him from his home. He didn’t ask what providence had brought this sign to him. He just started walking, cracking the gun open as he did so and checking that it was loaded. He steadied his mind around the fact that he had only one shot with this old Kentucky long. Only one. He had only the shot already primed in the rifle. The rest of his ammo lay in the back of the wagon.
The boy closed his eyes for the space of several breaths. He walked on, feeling the grass brush against his legs. Steady. Steady the mind. Hide in the trees along the creek. There would be a clear shot from there. Steady. This was the biggest thing he’d ever been asked to do. He pushed the questions away and filled their spaces with the words the uncle had taught him to say before killing.
MARSHALL INSTRUCTED CALEB TO BRING THE OTHERS OUT, and the key along with them. Caleb slipped back inside without comment. On a nod from Marshall, Gabriel set the box down beside the men’s horses. His hand gushed blood. He didn’t know whether to clench it or to let it hang limp, so he did both, alternately. Each time he flexed it, a searing pain shot up his arm. When he relaxed it, he could feel the painful pulse through his palm. His shirt and pants were soon stained a thick red.
When Solomon and Eliza stepped outside, their eyes flew straight to Gabriel. Eliza gasped and tried to go to him. Marshall stepped in her way and explained, “He’s all right. Just hand-shot. It’s painful, and it’s a bitch to heal, but it won’t be the thing that kills him.”
In answer to his mother’s questioning gaze, Gabriel muttered something. Marshall silenced him with a forceful blow to his abdomen, but the couple seemed to understand well enough. Within seconds they saw the wagon and the dim shape half hidden within it. Solomon called for the presence of God, and Eliza asked if she could go tend to Hiram. But Marshall told her to shut her trap. He figured the old fella was dead meat right enough, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She hung her head. “I guess we can’t expect a moment’s worth of decency from you.”
“No, don’t expect nothing from him,” Solomon said. His voice was tight. It was an exertion just to form the words, but he spat them out with vehemence. “The fool walketh in darkness, and so too shall he be damned to darkness.”
Marshall found this very amusing, but he chose not to answer either of them directly. “Another time I’d discourse with you. Unfortunately, we ain’t got much time, not with the way that monkey was running. We better keep ourselves to business. What do you say, Caleb? We gonna get this over with and pull foot?”
Caleb went on staring at Eliza.
“There’s time to finish this off, but that’s about it.”
Caleb turned his head toward Marshall. He didn’t speak but shared a moment in vision with the white man. There was a statement on his face, and Gabriel read it as clearly as Marshall did.
“Okay,” Marshall said, “you do what you want once I leave, but I’m getting the gold and going. The rest is up to yourself.”
Caleb nodded.
Marshall motioned with his hand, and Caleb nudged the couple in the back of the legs so they fell to their knees. “Now,” Marshall said, “open that crate, and let’s see what we got.” He tossed the boy the key. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll even give you one way out. All you gotta do is send a prayer to heaven asking for a miracle, and this is it. You’re gonna open up that crate now and pull out my rightful plunder. You’re gonna count out the bricks, and if they come to two—two solid bricks of gold bullion—I’ll consider it a divine intervention, and the lot of you will win yourselves a pardon. But if God don’t see fit to intervene in this way . . . then you can name the spot where you take the bullet. I won’t even take no joy from it. You just name your spot. We’ll take care of each of you the same way.”
Gabriel looked down at the box. He didn’t raise his eyes when he spoke. His voice was dry, forlorn, and older than ever before. “Marshall, there never were two bars.”
“Exactly. You sure do cut to the quick of things when you want to. That’s why I’m looking for an act of God. You people have faith, don’t ya? Let’s put it to the test.”
“We don’t test our God,” Solomon said. He kneeled beside his wife, both with their hands bound behind them, but he held himself straight, chin high and bruised face jutting up into the air. “He tests us. All else is vanity.” He didn’t look at M
arshall directly but added, almost as an afterthought, “And you’re about the vainest man that ever walked the earth.”
Marshall thought this over for a second, seemed to consider ignoring it, but then walked over and leaned close to Solomon’s face. “Don’t quote Scripture to me. You think I can’t spit it back at ya, don’t ya? Well, ‘Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.’ Ecclesiastes. Same book that says, ‘If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth, and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.’ Now what the hell does that mean? Ain’t that the biggest piece of nonsense you ever heard? And I’ll tell you another thing. I grew up listening to this shit, and the man who taught it to me was my father. Called himself Clemmins, and that’s all I really ever called him myself, cause I wasn’t about to call him Papa. This man used to spout the gospel like nobody’s business. You woulda thought he had the spirit in him for sure, cept he was the evilest bastard I’ve ever known. Worse than Caleb here.”
He straightened up, looking as though he might conclude the matter with that, but he caught Eliza’s eye and remembered something. He moved over to her, pushing Caleb out of the way to get near her face.
“There were a few good things Clemmins did for me when I was a boy,” he said. “One of them was, he set me up with my first screw. She was a black woman, much like yourself.” Behind Marshall, Caleb shifted his eyes. He looked away from Eliza and focused on the back of Marshall’s head. “Pretty thing she was, in her way. She was dark, like she’d just got off the boat from Guinea. She knew how to be ridden, too.” He turned away and gestured at Gabriel with his gun. “Open that thing.”
Gabriel turned the key, and the padlock fell open silently, as if it had died in his hands and gone limp. The boy moved slowly, for he had seen the shift in Caleb’s gaze. He moved the lock away from the crate and set it on the ground, then brought his fingers to the rusted iron of the latch. Caleb’s eyes had been steel-cold upon his mother, until something Marshall said . . . He lifted the latch free and released it. Caleb’s face had undergone a slow recoiling, as if he’d been slapped by a hand moving in slow motion . . . The latch stayed exactly where he left it, pointing toward him. Gabriel half opened it. He tried to read Caleb’s expression, and still he could not. The man took a step toward Marshall; his lips moved; his eyes blinked; but he was wholly unreadable.
Gabriel slipped his hand inside the crate, and for a few frantic seconds he felt nothing but the dusty grain of the wood. Then his fingers brushed something. He grasped it in the palm of his hand. It was cool against his flesh, hard and small. His finger touched the trigger. It seemed so tiny in his hand. He held out a second longer, but that was all he had. His hand rose, and with it the top of the box swung open and up came the gun, tight in his grip. The boy fully realized what he’d done only when he saw the short muzzle of the derringer before him. He knew in a flash of clarity that with this gun he’d have only one shot, a small shot at that, one that would have to be taken at close range.
Before he had time to act, a shot came from the trees along the creek. Beyond Marshall, Caleb jerked suddenly. He turned to the left, and as he did so, a spray of moisture sprang from his shoulder and hung for a second in the air. A snap followed, a dull, muted sound that Gabriel recognized as rifle fire. Marshall might have seen the gun in Gabriel’s hand, but he moved before he’d fully comprehended it. In the second it took the man to call to Caleb, Gabriel sprang to his feet, leapt over the box, and laid the muzzle of the derringer against Marshall’s neck. The man’s eyes snapped toward him, full recognition there for the first time, and the boy pulled the trigger.
At first it seemed as if nothing had changed. Marshall stood with a look on his face that was not much different from his familiar smirk. He didn’t raise his gun. He didn’t move. Then all at once his eyes flushed red, deeply and darkly red, a crimson like that which suddenly poured forth from his nose and tinted his teeth. He opened his mouth and stepped toward the boy. Gabriel thought he was falling, but instead Marshall grabbed him by the neck and brought him to his chest with one all-powerful arm. He jerked his body in one direction and another, using Gabriel as a shield against any more bullets. But he could not find the source of the shot that hit Caleb, and he turned the boy to face his parents.
Caleb held his rifle in one hand, but the other arm dangled, limp. When Marshall tried to speak, his voice was muffled and altogether unintelligible. He twice tried to form words but came out with a rasping, gurgling chaos of sound. Instead he gestured his instructions to Caleb with his gun hand, then brought the barrel of his pistol to rest on Gabriel’s cheek. He turned the boy’s face toward his parents so that he would see them die.
Caleb looked slowly from Marshall to the bound couple, then back to Marshall again. If he felt the pain of his shoulder wound, he showed no sign. Neither did he show any inclination to follow the other man’s directions, although it was clear enough that he understood them.
Gabriel couldn’t see Marshall’s face from where he stood, but he could tell the man’s eyes were locked on Caleb’s. He ordered him once more to shoot the couple, his voice a loud rasp that managed to express his meaning through the rage of the sound alone. But again Caleb stared as if he’d heard no such command. Finally Marshall cursed the black man and pulled his pistol away from Gabriel to shoot the others himself.
Only then did Caleb move. He lifted the rifle up to sight. From Gabriel’s angle, it looked as if the man were aiming at him. When Caleb pulled the trigger, the boy even felt the impact of the bullet against the side of his head. The arm gripping him moved away, and he fell free, into space. He hit the ground with a thud that released him from the sensation, and his body sprang up of its own accord. He spun in a sharp half-circle and realized then that it was not he who had been shot.
Marshall lay sprawled on his back, arms wide and pistol thrown some distance away. The boy stared at him, disbelieving. He tore his eyes away to search out Caleb, who was slowly lowering the rifle. The black man’s eyes were dark pinpoints in his face, like stones embedded in him, rock-hard objects whose function was uncertain. He shifted them from the fallen body, up to the boy, then over to the kneeling couple. They all stared back at him, sharing a moment of silence louder than any they’d ever heard.
THE TWO MEN RODE as if the entire world depended on their speed. Their horses ran neck and neck, pushing through the high prairie grass, sending up a flock of doves before them, and leaving behind them that strange silence that is the wake of bodies slicing the air. The horses were lathered and exhausted and cried within themselves for this to stop. But it didn’t. It couldn’t. The Scot felt his horse throw a shoe, and he thanked the horse for being all and completely the beautiful creature that she was. The Mexican only rode, knowing that each second passing here was a second passing there as well.
Both men knew where they were as they approached a gently sloping rise. It was a subtle feature on an expanse of similar features. They knew that they should slow here and think this through. But they didn’t, and the distance closed. The momentum they had already created, which was many weeks old now, carried them on. They crested the rise, and the homestead came into view. Only then did they rein in their mounts.
They could barely make out the players’ identities from this distance, but they knew immediately that the scene was not one they could have predicted. They took it all in within the space of a few seconds: the wounded in the field, those bound beside the soddy, the two standing, and the dead form laid out motionless in the short grass. Before the Scot could converse with him, the Mexican had spurred his horse forward. He swept down the slope at a mad run, a confusion of hooves and flapping arms and a sound that the Scot realized only later was some sort of war cry.
The black man saw him coming. He looked from one to the other of the party around him, lingering on the dead man, and then he walked to his horse. He mounted, again surveyed the carnage that he had helped c
reate, and moved his horse forward. First at a walk, then into a canter, and finally, as if gaining strength as he moved out of the orbit of the homestead, up to a gallop. He moved to the east, away from his pursuer. He didn’t look back. He managed to make his way out of the shallow depression that was the homestead, to rise up and watch as the sky opened before him in all of its magnificent breadth.
But he got little farther than this. He felt his horse shudder before he heard the rifle’s report. The beast paused in midstride, trembled, and lost step, then regained its footing and ran on as if it were mistaken about its own injury and could gallop away from it. It couldn’t. Within fifty yards it went down, falling onto its rear and spilling the man off its backside. The man rolled away, found his footing, and dodged as the horse’s hind legs flared out at the air. It tried to rise but couldn’t, and the man saw the wound and knew it was one of death. His rifle was trapped beneath the horse. He had a pistol in a hip holster. He touched it once, almost unconsciously, but he did not draw, and soon let his hand relax at his side.
The Mexican rode toward him, now unhurried, his rifle pointing to the sky. He stopped before him. There was much the Mexican had thought he would say at this moment. He had rehearsed his words in quiet hours both waking and sleeping, and he didn’t forget them now. Neither did he speak. The black man stood before him, but it was clear that words had little meaning at a time like this. In fact, words might simply defile the sanctity of what was to come. Instead, the Mexican lowered his rifle and shot the other through the chest. The blast blew the black man backward and laid him out flat, heart-shot and spine-broken. His fingers twitched at his side for a few seconds, but this was his last motion. The Mexican looked down only long enough to verify his death. Then he let his gaze rise up and float across the plains.
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