The Horses
Page 17
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I still don’t know why I ain’t dead,” Hairy Legs told the German’s wife. “That bullet should have killed me but it didn’t.”
“I’m leaving my Hans,” she said.
“Why?”
“I vant to live wid you.”
He sat by the window and studied the streaks of rain as they coursed down the panes of glass as if he were studying a schoolbook he had to take a test on the next day.
“No good,” he said.
Her jolly face crumpled.
“Without you, he will go out of business. I won’t have no place to eat.”
“I’ll cook for you.”
“Wouldn’t be the same.”
She wept. He went outside in the rain. It was a lightly falling rain that speckled his old army jacket with dark spots and gathered in his hair. The bullet had struck one of the brass buttons that slowed it considerable, and it just ended up there under the skin where he easily dug it out with the tip of his knife, then fused the wound closed by heating the blade and cauterizing the wound. Hurt some, the burning worse than being shot. When it happened, he thought, This is it, and sat down right there in the street next to the dead half-wit and his deader horse.
And by the time he realized it wasn’t nothing that was going to kill him, that everything was over, that everybody that was fated to be killed that day was, and the rest were among the living and would remain that way, he knew all he needed to.
A strange turn of events, he thought.
She came and stood in the doorway of his place—the river running muddy brown, cutting along its banks, cutting a new course each time so that the river was always changing, never in the same place.
“Please,” she said.
He turned, the rain in his hair and running down his face so that the rain could easily have been mistaken for tears if somebody looking at him didn’t know any different.
“I think I’m going to go East,” he said.
“Oh!” she moaned and ran and got into her buggy, took the whip and lashed it over the rump of the harnessed horse, sending it into a bolting trot. He watched her ride off.
Once was enough, he thought. What would I do with a wife if I had one?
Then he mounted the horse the man had given him and rode to town and sat there while the funeral procession formed out front of the undertaker’s. Several men carried a lone coffin into the waiting hearse. Practically the whole town had turned out and stood waiting in the rain for things to begin.
Bilk and Little Paris were there among them.
It was the second day of funerals.
The day before the town had buried Woody and Glen, Pablo and Joe Toe; even though Joe Toe wasn’t one of their own, he’d died in the bank doing business. And after Woody and Glen, Pablo and Joe Toe, they buried the four outlaws—whose identity remained mostly a mystery to them all except for two names written in the hotel’s registry: the Mortician and his Assistant.
They hired a dozen men to dig graves, and all the dead were buried in the cemetery side by side by side, for death held no prejudice and the good earth cradled the sinner and saint alike, and a man got paid the same to dig a grave for an outlaw as he would digging a grave for a lawman.
“It’s a proper day for a funeral,” Bilk said. “This rain.”
“It is, ain’t it?” Little Paris replied. “But gawd, it is so sad.”
“Maybe that’s the last we’ll see of such violence for some time. It feels like a storm that’s just finally blown itself out.”
“I doubt the peace will hold long,” she said. “It never does in these parts.”
“We can hope.”
“We surely can do that. But soon as this is over, I’m leaving on tomorrow’s train.”
Bilk felt his heart sink.
“I will miss you like an arm cut off,” he said.
“What a lovely thing to say. I was wondering if I could borrow five hundred dollars to get me started?” She never mentioned about the money she’d already saved, for a smart whore never talks about her life, she only listens to others talking about theirs—when they’re in the mood to be talkative, and thank God most of the men she’d consorted with and who had paid her saw fit to be taciturn and kept their jaws locked.
“Yes, I suppose I could see my way clear to spot you a stake even though I wish you’d stay here with me,” Bilk said.
“Consider it a loan,” she said.
“I’ll just consider it the price of falling in love,” he said.
The Mexican musicians began to play and Alfred Burpee sat straight-backed atop his fancy hearse, and next to him his assistant, Melo.
“We been busier than two raccoons sucking eggs,” Alfred said. “It pays the rent, but to be honest with you, I hope this is the last of it for a while.”
Melo remained quiet. He had never seen so many dead bodies in such a short time. It was as though they were raining down from the sky. Men he knew and men he didn’t.
“Might close up shop for a while and go to California,” Burpee said offhandedly.
“See the ocean, dip my feet in…” It was something he’d been thinking about for a while and now that business had been good, he thought maybe he could afford the luxury.
“I might go see my people in Mexico, then,” Melo said. “Take my wife and kids…”
“Good idea. A fellow can only take so much of this murderous business before he has to go do a little living.”
“Sí.”
She came proudly from her house wearing the new black dress. No veil for her. She wanted everyone to see her face, to see that she was strong, stronger than death, any death. She wanted them to look at her and know that she had loved this man—this Jim Glass, and not even death could steal that from her.
She had been with him in those last moments, had cradled his head in her lap and stroked his damp, warm face as he struggled to hold on.
“I wish…I wish…”
“What do you wish, my sweet?” she had said.
“I wish…” He struggled with it, and she kissed his eyes and lips.
“I wish we would have gotten married,” he said finally, getting it all said.
She held her hand near his eyes, showed him the ring still a little large for her thin finger and said, “We are married. We always have been, corazon.”
He looked around at the other faces that formed a circle above him, the beautiful blue sky above them.
“I love you,” he said.
As hard as she tried, she could not keep her tears from falling on his face; they did anyway. She started to brush them away, but he stopped her by taking her hand and holding it.
“Stay with me a little longer…”
“I will stay with you forever,” she said.
“Yes…Just a little longer…”
Then she told him about the life she felt—the little spark of life she knew was growing inside her. But she could not know with any certainty if he heard about his son or not, for his eyes were closed, even though his breathing continued—just little sighs of breathing.
And now she came and they parted for her, these who had gathered to pay him respect. She arrived, and Bilk helped her into the buggy with Little Paris, and they rode together behind the hearse with the others falling in behind, folks in wagons and buggies, and men on horses. But this time the burial would not be in the cemetery, but on the ridge behind Jim’s place—the one where he had buried his friends, the one he so often spoke of as being the most beautiful place he’d ever seen. From the ridge a man could look down on his holdings, the house that used to belong to Charlie Bowdre and his wife, upon the river that flowed eternally, upon the distant mountains that in the winter and spring held the purity of snow.
A freshly dug grave awaited; she would see that a stone was put in place, had already ordered it.
And when they made the ridge, the rain stopped as though commanded and the sky to the north cleared off clean as chalk erased
from a blackboard, and while the priest spoke, she turned and saw off in the distance a small dark herd of horses grazing.
Wild horses, and thought, They know, they have come home to be with him.
About the Author
BILL BROOKS is an author of twenty novels of historical and frontier fiction. He lives in North Carolina.
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By Bill Brooks
The Journey of Jim Glass
THE HORSES
A BULLET FOR BILLY
RIDES A STRANGER
Dakota Lawman
THE BIG GUNDOWN
KILLING MR. SUNDAY
LAST STAND AT SWEET SORROW
Law for Hire
SAVING MASTERSON
DEFENDING CODY
PROTECTING HICKOK
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE HORSES. Copyright © 2008 by Bill Brooks. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition October 2007 ISBN 9780061746963
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