Storm's Thunder

by Brandon Boyce

  I pull back and Storm blows to a halt in the shadow of the tower. “Figure this must be the midpoint. Though I ’spect a train can’t make seventeen miles without stopping for water, it’s a bad day to begin with.” I swing down near the hand pump that stands next to the tower. A half-barrel receptacle sits off to the side. I kick it underneath the pump and get the pump primed and soon have warm desert water flowing into the barrel. The water is clear and the new barrel has not yet had time to rust.

  “Good thing somebody had the forethought to consider them dullards what would think it a bright idea to cross this stretch on foot.” Storm shoots me the blue eye and moseys over toward the barrel. “Yes. I am aware I speak of present company. I don’t need you to tell me as much.” Storm begins to lap at the water in the barrel, then decides he would rather drink it straight from the pump. I uncap the canteen and suck down the last of the cold coffee and go to the pump to fill it with water before Storm slobbers it all to tarnation.

  “Mind if I get in there too?” He minds plenty, but lets me in enough to fill the canteen an inch or two, then nudges me aside again. “Think the country will look the same in California?” I fix out at the valley and its gentle shift from red to tan as the long, gradual slope down from Santa Fe seems to finally have an end to it. “I don’t know why it would,” answering my own question. “Country is country and I can’t imagine any reason for things to be otherwise. I heard talk that out East a fella can gaze out in any direction and see nothing but green, but until I witness such event I will consider it hearsay.”

  Storm flaps his tail at a fly as he drinks, not much caring one way or the other as to my observation. The breeze bottoms out, leaving a silence disturbed only by the lapping of Storm’s greedy tongue at the water. But there is something else—a pitch so high it skirts beyond the edge of what humans are supposed to hear. I look back at Storm and see his ears dancing, trying to make sense of it, and I know it is out there. It swells just a hair and draws my attention downward, toward the rails. I drop to my knees and press an ear against the warm steel. The train’s song zings through my skull and down through the spine.

  “Train’s on the move,” I say, still kneeling. If a little two-car spur generates that much disturbance, I can only wonder the noise preceding the Santa Fe when it gets to full speed. “Break’s over.”

  I am about to rise when I notice the dirt beneath Storm, matted and scarred with the hard, arcing patterns of horseshoes. The markings are faint, but wholly different from those of the stallion.

  “Somebody been through here today.” Then the wind picks up sharp, snapping in from the east. Storm pulls up from the water, his top lip flaring. I know what is coming but I can’t stop him. All at once the stallion breaks hard, charging into the wind and by now I catch scent of the mare as well. “No, Storm!”

  His tail waves good-bye as he bounds up and over the berm. I give chase, narrowly missing the reins as they flap hopeless through the air. Rising to the top of the berm I see a mare—a chestnut star, unsaddled, way out here in the middle of nowhere. I call again, this time with the weight of the devil himself behind my voice.

  “Whooooa!”

  I’ll be dammed if the stallion don’t stop where he stands, halfway to the mare. And I know it is only by the dumb luck that he cooled his fire last night with that other mare that he is not presently atop the chestnut, or at least giving chase with hell’s fury.

  “Easy boy. Come on.” I see in his eyes the battle raging between allegiance to my command and the maddening drive to conquer the estrus female. “Easy back now.” He ponders my order and not much more. He turns. I need his bridle, but mostly, I need that Spencer. Trouble hangs so heavy in the air I can taste it, but cannot yet locate its origin. The whole thing is wrong. Dead wrong. And then I see the rope dangling from the mare. She has been ground-tied—left there on purpose.

  A rifle chambers behind me. “Hold it right there, Injun.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I could pick out Lem’s needling voice across a windy canyon. But this time he is close, ten yards at most. “You step back from that stallion, real slow.”

  The stallion. Yes. He wants the horse, but fears that he might miss. Otherwise just shoot me in the back, you dang fool. I turn slow and catch his slight frame at the edge of my vision. “Hold it there! You get them mitts up.”

  I do as I’m told. He does not know that he has already lost. I cluck a soft breath from my lips, but it is enough for Storm to hear. The stallion tightens up closer to me.

  “I said, get away from the damn horse.”

  “I can’t help if he follows me.” Lem straightens up, dust covering his face, his limbs moving stiff from the cramped hiding place on the backside of the berm. A Remington rifle jitters in his arms, shoulder height.

  “You think you’re smart? Showing me up like you done. Well, who’s smart now? I’mma be taking that horse. I’ll stud him. Then I’ll gut him. And ain’t a damn thing your dead red body gonna say about it neither. And that money too.”

  “I ain’t got the money. I spent it all.”

  “Hell, you did. I seen you at the Duck. You stashing your coin right in them trousers.”

  “Quit yakking and shoot him!” The frustrated voice barks from my left. I just make out a dagger of rock jutting from the ground in my periphery.

  “You want me to shoot up what we come all this way for?” Lem yelling toward the boulder. I keep my eyes on the Remington, but now detect movement stirring to my left. “This gut-eater ain’t going nowhere. Ain’t got his Spencer, neither. And all dolled in that pretty suit—got himself so citified he done forgot his holster.”

  “I’ll shoot him then.” The second man walking toward me, his margin for error shrinking with every step.

  “Hell, you will,” Lem’s eyes narrowing. He steadies the rifle and aims at my belly. “I’mma watch this gut-eater squirm. You’ll be begging me for a head shot.”

  “Fine. Take the money.” I reach for my waistband.

  “Slow,” Lem tightens his grip on the rifle.

  I creep my hand inside my trousers, finger the pistol and snap my arm up, falling left as I fire. The shot catches Lem in the face, through his bandage. I roll to the ground. A shotgun booms behind me and I roll again and come up shooting. A torso in checkered flannel turns my way, bringing with it the double twelve and its last unfired barrel. I squeeze again, this time finding his sternum. His arms bend, the shotgun blasting upward. The man reels back on his heels and stumbles backward. I see a beard now—reddish and heaving—and a hard face softened by pain. His hate-filled eyes, still defiant, narrow in a final push to turn the tables. He paws for his holster and I shoot him again, upper lungs, and he falls back flat. I cross to him, kick the twelve away and stomp on his arm. He struggles to move and then gives up on that and gurgles for air, his lungs filling with blood.

  “You put that mare out yonder, try to draw out my horse?”

  “Ain’t no stallion say no to a wet mare.”

  “Storm ain’t just any stallion.”

  “Ain’t no horse worth dying for.”

  “Guess your life ain’t worth much, then.”

  “Lem got the horse. I get the money. That’s the deal.”

  “Who says I got money?”

  “Lem said you was splashing it outside the Jew’s house.”

  “Lem says too much.”

  “That he do. He dead?”

  I look back over at Lem. “Blew out his skull. Most of his jaw. Looks like your scattergun got a piece too.”

  “Well, shit,” the man says, a twisted smile parting his strawberry whiskers. “Plan-wise, this was not our finest hour.”

  “Nope. That it weren’t.” I take my foot off his arm and let the shadow of the pistol block the sun from his eyes.

  “Make it quick, ya bastard.” I set the hammer back and when he hears it his mouth tightens, but I stop, my mind chewing on a nut that won’t crack.

  “Thing is, one bit I
can’t figure is how come you knew I’d be out here.”

  “That’s on Lem. I just bought into it.”

  “Yeah, but Lem ain’t got your coloring.”

  The man’s face turns sour. “Hell you talking ’bout?”

  “See, there was people what knew I had a good horse, and there’s people what knew I’d be taking the train, but there ain’t but one who knows I’d be passing along this stretch at this very hour, and that’s the fella what sold me my train ticket.”

  “Well, you best take it up with him, then.”

  “Thing is, looking down at your sorry mug I feel like I’m talking to him right now, what with both of you sporting a red beard on the same luggy frame. That ain’t no coincidence. And the both of you could be twin to that sum’bitch Kirby who started all this.”

  “That ain’t the way Kirby tell it!”

  “Three fat red-heads. You think I can’t put that together that ya’ll is kin?”

  “Burn in Hell, gut-eater.”

  I lower the gun to his leg. “Reckon I’ll start at your ankle, work up to your knee, let the coyotes do the rest.” The chugging rattle of the shuttle train rises from the north. I squeeze the trigger and blow a hole in his boot. He screams, his back arching, but there is no wind left in his lungs.

  “All right, we’s kin. Got the same daddy, the three of us.”

  “Thought so.” I put the kill shot through his forehead and the coming train don’t give me much time to feel bad about it.

  A plume of billowy steam coughs skyward a half mile down rail. I grab the dead man’s collar and drag him behind the boulder where he started. Storm lopes a circle around us, wanting to be close to the action and I catch a rein and ease him behind the boulder as well. He ain’t much hidden, but it will have to do. I drop his rope to the ground and tell him to stay put. Then I sprint for the mare, whooping it up with my arms as I get closer. She says to hell with her ground tie and scampers off, away from the tracks, just like I want her to. Then I double back hard as I can run and grab hold of Lem’s shirt and drag his messed-up corpse behind the bolder and collapse to my knees, sucking air as the shuttle train creaks past.

  I look up and am taken by just how slow it moves. Only three cars, you’d think a straight downhill shot would get that thing going, but instead it rumbles along at what Storm would do in an easy canter. A thought comes to me, that if the mighty Santa Fe herself rolls that slow, we might not see California by wintertime.

  Then the little train is gone and in the quiet that remains, the nervous energy that comes with killing a man shudders forth from my stomach and I vomit up breakfast. Taking a life—even them two what laid in wait to kill me—sits wrong in the heart, and I hope it always will. Storm turns his head and locks that blue eye on me like he does when he sees the world different.

  You’ve killed many.

  “Yeah, well, that don’t mean it’s a natural state for a man, and him what says it is ain’t right in the head. Come on, let’s get cleaned up. We’re back to running late again.”

  I draw my knife and slice open the dead men’s shirts and down the side of their trousers, leaving the flesh exposed. “Only ones we need finding these two are condors and coyotes. Anybody else is trouble we don’t want.”

  I leave Storm behind the rocks and head back toward the water tower, reloading the thirty-two as I go. The little pistol pulled its weight and then some, but rolling across the ground left my new suit dusty and smudged all over. Could be worse, though. No torn fabric to speak of, just some spattered blood below the knee and streaks of dirty blood on the boots. Most of the dust feels like it landed on my face. I get to the water barrel and bend over it, studying the face mirrored back in the clear water of the half-filled barrel. That first reflection after bloodshed always seems to age a man ten years.

  The water tower blocks the sun, leaving a cool circle of shade around the pump and barrel. I reach down to bring a handful of water to my mouth when I see, reflected in the surface, a pistol. The blue steel extends over the top ledge of the tower and aims down in my direction. Pivoting from the shoulders, I spin and fire the thirty-two upward as I duck underneath the tower. Blind shots rain down from above, thrashing the water in the barrel and pinging off the pump. I crouch low, retreating to the dead center of the ground directly beneath the tower, out of reach of the haphazard firing of the long-barreled Smith & Wesson. Then the shooting stops and I can hear him listening.

  He shimmies—repositioning himself—his every move reverberating through the water tank, betraying his location while mine is obscured by the wind playing tricks on his ears some twenty feet off the ground. The roof of the tower extends beyond the width of the massive water tank in a three-foot overhang. He slides to the edge to get a better listen. I take silent aim at the overhang supporting him. Slowly a hand creeps over the edge, showing all the knuckle I need as it angles the pistol down beneath the tower. I fire once and hear a scream as the pistol falls.

  “Ah, shit!” He is young and unaccustomed to fearing for his life. Frantic scrambling as he tries to get back from the edge. I fire up at the overhang, blasting the boards where I know his body to be. But the wood planks are thick and absorb the small caliber. He knows it and I know it. “I got a rifle up here, mister. And your pistol ain’t shooting through, so just leave me be. We’ll forget this whole thing ever happened.” I step around the base of the tower and can see his silhouette lying prone against the shadow of the sloped roof.

  “You had a rifle, you’d a shot me already.”

  “All right, then. You just stick your head out from under there and see what’s what.”

  I float back under the tower to the far side, closest to the way I came. I cup my hands around my mouth and whistle once, hard and quick. Over the top of the boulder I see the tips of Storm’s ears perk to attention. His long gray snout dips around the corner, his neck turning just enough to let both eyes catch me head on. I hold my arm out straight, and Storm understands and breaks into a run dead at me.

  “What is that?” The boy yelling now, panic in his voice. “Mister, I swear. I will shoot that horse dead.”

  I step to the side and grab the Spencer from the scabbard and try to halt Storm as he lopes past, but his momentum carries him underneath the shade of the tower and back out into the sunlight on the other side, exposed. Somewhere above me a hammer cocks. I chamber a round, turning from the waist, and bring the Spencer up in a single motion. I fire. The half-inch bullet craters the wood and leaves a hole ringed wet with blood. The boy makes a new sound, something mortal, and then, summoning all strength, slithers toward the center of the roof. I chamber-fire, obliterating the overhang in his wake until he has found the protection of the tank and the thousand gallons that stand between him and my rifle.

  “Look, it ain’t gotta be like this, mister.” His young voice labors with each shallow breath.

  “You shoot at my horse, I’ll kill your whole family.”

  “I ain’t gonna shoot nobody. That’s plain enough by now ain’t it? Hell I had you dead to rights. So that’s gotta be worth something.”

  “Well, if nothing is something than I guess it means that.”

  “You got me good, through the belly. But I ’spect I can make it back to town. I don’t know you. You don’t know me. What say we just forget this whole thing ever happened.”

  I take a step back and blow a hole in the bottom of the tank, water geysering out and soaking the ground. A second shot punctures lower, causing a deluge and leaving my Coffeyvilles ankle high in water that ain’t done rising. I wonder if the boy understands that in less than a minute the impenetrable shield he staked his life on will be nothing but a hollow shell of soggy lumber. Then I hear him scrape to his feet, his boot heels clambering across the tin roof. I slosh back toward the ladder that runs up the side and peek out and don’t see anything. Then my foot gets stuck in the mud and I bend down to free it and when I look upward again the sky goes black as he crashes into me, boots fi
rst. His weight carries downward and strips the Spencer from my hands. I grab onto his legs and twist and we splash into the water, the pain of impact just starting to bloom in my back and shoulder. His gun must have gone flying too because I feel him pawing though the mud.

  I crawl up his body, reaching for control of his arms as he flails through the black water in a desperate search for the first gun he can find. He is lighter than I am, but more scared of dying, but the two don’t quite balance out. We struggle there for a bit and then I get a full grip of his young man’s hair and push his head down in the water and into the mud. He starts to kick, his spurred heels slashing at my legs. I work my way up his back and wrench his left arm behind his back and center all my weight down into his hips, pinning him beneath me in the shallow foot of water. A panicked, high-pitched squeal bubbles up through the water and then the sound gets low and gurgling as he starts to take water into his lungs. I crank on his shoulder and something pops inside him and the shoulder bends like it shouldn’t and then his legs stop kicking. I stay there, muscles tensed—I don’t know how long, maybe a minute—until his whole body goes soft and his ribs stop moving and no sound comes from him at all.

  I unravel my arm from his and roll off him. His body floats to the surface, and I sit back onto my tail, right there in the water. He driftwoods away from me, facedown, across the sudden pond. Storm doubles back, curious, and then bends down and laps up a little of the water. I get to my feet, my neck and shoulder throbbing where he landed on me. I run my finger along my collarbone and feel for a break, but it seems only the birthplace of a horrendous bruise. Behind me, the gutted tank has slowed to a steady drip. The stallion finishes his drink, unimpressed, and then blows once and skips over toward me, steering clear of the widening puddle. He scratches impatient at the ground.

  “I am aware of the hour. I’ll be with you directly.” I think about leaving the boy where he lay, but it don’t feel right. The ruined suit—sogged through and heavier than a buffalo hide—clings to my skin as I slosh over to him. I grab the back of his collar and drag him out of the water and turn him over. Brown water dibbles from his open mouth and beads up on the straggly hairs a boy his age would proudly call a beard. There is some stature to him, but otherwise he lay caught between hay and grass young enough to have a momma who expects him home for supper. Best she never knows her boy begged for his life at the end and died—eyes open—in a foot of dirty water. He may have lost his nerve for killing as soon as he saw me, but that don’t mean he didn’t ride out here with murder in his heart. Sometimes that’s enough. Other times it don’t even take that much.