The Outsider

by Penelope Williamson

  They rode among the bleating, milling sheep, smashing those clubs into woolly skulls. MacDuff, instinctively protecting the herd, went after a blaze-faced sorrel, leaping up at the rider's leg with his snarling teeth.

  The man on the sorrel twisted in the saddle and swung his club, catching MacDuff with a terrible thwack. The dog went flying backward, yelping and smacking hard into the ground. He lay whimpering, with his hind leg twisted crooked, splintered bone ends sticking up through blood-wet fur.

  Bastards! Benjo screamed inside his head. He pulled out his loaded sling. He gripped the two ends of the rawhide cords in his left hand and whipped it hard above bis head.

  He let go of one cord sharply, and the rock whizzed through the night air.

  He'd aimed for the red glint of reflected firelight he saw in the slit of the mask, the man's eye, and the rock struck true. The man shrieked, throwing up his hands, grabbing for his face, blood spilling out from between his fingers.

  Eye for an eye! Eye for an eye! Benjo screamed in his head.

  Another man came galloping up to the campfire. He had a torch in his hand, which he set alight. He held the torch high as he spurred his horse, jerking its head around by the reins.

  "No, Pa! Don't!" cried the man on the blaze-faced sorrel. He tried to follow after the man with the torch, but he reeled dizzily in his saddle, nearly falling. Where the eye slit in the gunnysack mask had been, there was only blood.

  The man with the torch was laughing. He leaned over and set the blazing wood to the back of a fat ewe. The ewe turned into a bawling wild-eyed torch herself and ran, frenzied, into the middle of the flock, touching off the entire herd in one blazing lanolin-fed fireball.

  The masked men rode around the clearing, clubbing all the bawling, woolly heads they could find, sending others with their fleece in flames off into the pines. And then they seemed suddenly to ride back into the black night, from where they had come.

  Only one man stayed behind. He hadn't been doing any sheep killing. He'd just sat there on his horse and watched, his cocked shotgun in his hand.

  Now he sent his horse in a slow walk toward the camp-fire and Benjo watched him come, the sling hanging empty from his own hand.

  The burning sheep had set the pines and the buffalo grass on fire. Benjo could feel the heat of it blazing at his back. The fire had lit up the whole clearing with an eerie red glow. And the world was full of terrible noise: the crackle of flames, Mose's cries, MacDuff's whimpers, the screaming bleats of the sheep, the roar of the wind.

  The man brought his horse right up to Benjo. He had his shotgun lying across his lap, his finger on the trigger. He leaned over, and the mask made him seem as if he were looking at Benjo with a blinkless stare. "You know a Johnny Cain, boy?"

  Benjo's chest was crushed with fear. He was sure he'd never get the words out, that all of his words were dammed forever in his throat. But they surprised him by coming out with barely a hitch. "H-he's my father."

  Benjo couldn't see the man's smile, but he could feel it, like a cold draft from behind the gunnysack. "You tell him that Jarvis Kennedy don't give a shit whether he's gotten religion or not. You tell him that I'm getting plumb wore out waiting for him to rediscover his guts. He can find me in the Gilded Cage. Anytime tomorrow, I'll be there."

  He turned his horse's head around and started off, but then he came back. "You tell him, too, that if he don't show, then I'll be coming to wherever he's at." The man laughed. "You tell him I am his Armageddon."

  Mose's blood seemed to be everywhere, lying in puddles on the grass, smeared over the pine straw, splattered in black wet streaks all over his clothes.

  Benjo knelt beside him, and Mose looked up, wild-eyed with pain and fear. "Benjo... I need to get to a doctor, bad."

  Benjo nodded his head extra hard so that Mose would be sure to see. There was no way he was ever getting any more words out of his throat. His throat felt like it had a noose tightened around it. A hangman's noose.

  He didn't realize he was crying until he brushed the hair out of his face and his hand came away wet. He took off his coat and wrapped Mose's arm up with it, wrapped it up tight. He didn't want to think of what that arm was like.

  He went to check on MacDuff next. The dog's leg was broken in two places and the bone had cut through his hide. He was whimpering, soft little yelps of pain. His eyes showed white around the edges.

  They had to get off the mountain. Not only because they needed to get to a doctor, but because the whole mountain was going up in flames. The fire was blazing wildly through the drought-struck pines, licking hungrily through the dry grass. And the wind that came roaring out of the night was whipping at it, feeding it.

  Somehow he got both Mose and MacDuff into the wagon bed, although he couldn't have explained afterward where he found the strength. The sky rained cinders, blistering their skin. Thick roiling clouds of black smoke rolled overhead, burning their throats raw. Benjo drove the wagon, lurching, over the trail, with the fire crackling and clawing at their backs.

  He looked back once. It was as if all of heaven had gone up in flames.

  Rachel stood in the yard watching as her son drove their wagon across the corduroy bridge and turned into the yard, hours before she expected him.

  Behind her, she heard the door bang shut, heard her Englische husband come out of the house. She didn't have to turn around and look to know he was already wearing his gun. He slept with it looped over the bedpost at night. He put it on first thing in the morning, along with his trousers.

  She was running alongside the wagon before Benjo could pull it to a complete stop. Like something out of a terrible dream that kept coming back night after night, she saw that a boy was lying in the wagon bed, only it was Mose Weaver this time, and his leg wasn't bloody, it was his arm. His arm was wrapped up in Benjo's coat. MacDuff was back there, too. She thought the dog was dead until she saw his head move.

  Her boy's face looked bloodless beneath a covering of soot and ash. Rachel's gaze jerked off her son for an instant and lifted up to the mountain where their sheep summered. She hadn't noticed it before, probably thinking the red glow was part of the rising sun, but she could see it plain now. The mountain was on fire.

  Benjo's lips pulled back from his teeth, his throat worked hard, his eyes bulged with the effort to force the words out, but they weren't coming. Young Mose Weaver, though, was conscious enough to tell them most all of what had happened.

  Her Englische husband didn't offer to kill them for her this time; he didn't even bother to tell her he was going to kill them. He just went about the business of getting himself ready to do it.

  Their old draft mare's head was dragging the ground, and her legs were splayed with exhaustion. He unhitched her from the harness and brought out his own horse. There was no thought, no feeling, nothing showing on his face. Nothing.

  "I'm going with you," Rachel said.

  He gave her a curt nod. "I want you and Benjo both with me, where I can keep you safe. You heard what the boy said about that man-killer threatening to come after me here. But you do what I tell you once we get into town, Rachel. You stay put where I tell you to stay put."

  "Johnny." She touched his arm. The flesh beneath his shirt was rigid. He stepped back away from her, out of her reach. "Please think about Jesus. About how, although His person was always yielding, His heart was never weak."

  "Better to say here's where he ran, than here's where he died, huh?"

  "Don't—"

  He looked up from buckling the harness parts, and his hard blue gaze met hers like a blow.

  "You remember what I told you up on the mountain, about killing that hog farmer? I told you how I killed him, but I never said how I felt about it. After I'd done it, when I looked down on him, on what I could see of his face through the blood, I knew he'd broken me because I was still scared of him. Even with him dead, I was scared of him. And I hated him worse than ever then, because I knew I was never going to be free. I was always
going to be his slave."

  She heard his words, but it was his eyes that broke her heart. It was like watching a blizzard blow in from the north to seal up the land in a cold sheet of ice. He can never change, she thought. Never.

  "But not ever again, Rachel. I'll not be a slave to another man ever again. I won't yield, I won't run. I won't turn the other cheek." His voice was as hard and cold as his eyes.

  "I will pray for you, Johnny Cain," she said.

  "I had to take the Weaver boy's arm off," Doctor Lucas Henry said.

  He spoke to the woman who sat on his black horsehair sofa. She had one arm wrapped around her son, and she was holding him pressed close to her thighs. At Lucas's words, she put her curled fingers to her mouth and bowed her head to pray.

  Except for no longer wearing the starched white cap on her head, she looked the same as she always had. It was hard for the mind to accept that she was wife to the man standing at the window.

  Johnny Cain was looking through the dusty panes at the deserted street beyond, waiting. He was apart from everyone in the room, drawn into a taut alertness deep inside himself. A true outsider.

  Lucas was worried about the boy, that he might be going into shock. He went to him for a closer look, squatting to put himself at eye level. He saw that while the pale skin beneath the gray eyes looked bruised, the eyes themselves were clear and bright. He was tougher than he looked. He took the boy's wrist, feeling for his pulse.

  "I set your dog's leg," Lucas said, his voice gentle, yet firm. The boy's pulse was normal. "What was his name again?"

  The boy's head jerked, his throat clenching. His lips pulled back from his teeth. "Muh!"

  "MacDuff, isn't it?" Lucas dropped the boy's wrist, straightening up. "Well, he's going to be just fine. Though he might not run as fast as he used to."

  "The jackrabbits out at our place will be grateful to hear that," Rachel said. She tried to smile, but she couldn't. She put her trembling mouth to her son's head and held him tighter.

  The boy's left hand hovered near his sling, much the way Johnny Cain's stayed close to his gun. A couple of hours ago, Lucas had cleaned out and sewn up the right orbit of young Quinten Hunter, who had lost an eye for forever after to a rock hurled from that sling.

  But then, young Quinten and his father had set fire to a whole herd of sheep and had shot off a boy's arm. So who was to say he didn't get what he deserved? Lucas thought. Maybe God liked to balance things out after all.

  Rachel stirred, holding her boy closer. She was praying again: she had her eyes closed and her lips were moving. Lucas marveled at the depth of her faith, envying her.

  How can you look at what your own son has done, at what has been done to you and yours, and not know what we are in our hearts, Plain Rachel? How can you not see the self's dark potential that exists in us all?

  A boot heel scraped on the walk outside, and boards creaked. Lucas's gaze jerked to the man at the window, but Johnny Cain stood in stillness. His hand didn't go for his gun.

  The door banged open without a knock. Noah Weaver stood at the threshold, his eyes searching.

  Lucas started toward him, but the big man pushed him aside and headed for the back room. "I had to amputate his arm," Lucas said. "He's had a severe shock to his nervous system and he's lost a lot of blood. He shouldn't be moved."

  Lucas might as well have been talking to a stone wall. The Plain man's broad back disappeared through the door.

  He came out with the boy in his arms, carrying him like a babe, his cheeks, his beard, gleaming wetly with tears. The boy groaned, his eyelids fluttering, but he didn't awaken.

  "He is my son," Noah Weaver said. "I am taking him home."

  Rachel stood up, holding out her hand to him. "Noah..."

  The Plain man looked at her, then through her.

  He walked straight and sure out the open door, with his son in his arms, taking him home.

  They all stood unmoving and Lucas could hear no sound in the room but his own breathing. Then Johnny Cain left the window and walked to the door. He didn't look at anyone, he didn't move quickly, he just walked to the door and went through it.

  His wife watched him go. "He didn't even tell me goodbye," she said.

  "I reckon," Doctor Lucas Henry said, going to the door and pushing it closed, "that's because he figures he's coming back."

  Johnny Cain walked out into the middle of the sunbaked road. He walked slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the brighter light, letting his ears open up to hear even the slightest of sounds. His hat was pulled low, shading his eyes, so he could see better. He flexed his fingers, unconsciously limbering the muscles for the draw.

  He saw the town barber dart into the Gilded Cage saloon, and he smiled. He felt a single, quick pulse of fear, and then nothing.

  He stopped across the street from the saloon, directly in line with the swinging summer doors. He leaned against the post of a hitching rail, next to a horse trough, and waited.

  Jarvis Kennedy burst out of the doors, firing, a Colt in each hand. But Cain had seen the toe of his boot coming a full second before the rest of him.

  Cain's revolver was in his hand in a motion so quick and smooth and natural that it was like the act of breathing.

  His first bullet ripped Jarvis Kennedy's throat open.

  Blood spilled in a scarlet wash down the front of his white vest and shirt. The second bullet got Jarvis in the back as he spun around. He fell through the saloon's doors. He was dead before his face came to rest in the sawdust on the floor.

  Cain was already swinging the barrel of his Colt to the right, aiming, firing at the man who was coming at him from an alley with a shotgun.

  Shotgun pellets smacked into the trough behind Cain with a splintering crackle, but he ignored it. The first of his bullets went through the man's coattails, the second went where it was supposed to, right where a gold watch chain hung with seals stretched across his belly. The man screamed, doubling over, his arm clutching at his middle. He started to crawl, bleeding, back toward the mouth of the alley, and Cain fired again. The man jerked and went still.

  The sound of the last shot fell, echoing, into a breath-held silence. Skeins of gunsmoke drifted past on the wind. Cain opened the gate of his Colt, ejected the empty cartridges and reloaded, his fingers moving sure and fast. He could taste the bitterness of gunpowder on his lips.

  The man lying in the road, at the mouth of the alley, was dressed rich and had a fine head of white hair. Cain thought he could be Fergus Hunter, probably was, but he really didn't care a damn. If he didn't get Hunter today, he'd get him later. He often didn't know the names of the men he had killed, and didn't suppose it mattered one bit, to them or to him.

  He knew there was someone else in the alley, but whoever it was had apparently quit on the notion of dying today. Cain kept his gun cocked, his finger a hair's breadth from squeezing the trigger, and waited.

  A young man with long dark hair and a bandage wrapped around his head to cover one eye inched out of the shadows into the light, his hands raised high in the air. "I threw down my gun!" he called out, his voice breaking. "That's my father, please..."

  Cain didn't move, not even his eyelids stirred. The young man fell to his knees and crawled through the dust to the man who lay in a spreading pool of blood. He pulled the dead man into his lap, and the man's arm flopped over, revealing a gaping hole in his belly. But a man didn't die from a gut shot, not right away. The killing wound, Cain knew, was the bullet he had put right in the middle of the man's forehead, like a third eye.

  The quiet that came after death was different than any other silence, Cain thought. There was almost a terrible beauty about it. All he could hear was the beat of his own heart.

  Cain waited. He waited a long while, gun in hand, because you could never be too careful. Many a man had died from holstering his pistol too soon.

  Something banged behind him.

  He whirled...

  When he saw Rachel come running out
Doc Henry's front door, crying his name, he had already fired.

  "Johnny!" she shouted, and felt something slam into her chest, knocking the breath out of her, and she fell.

  She couldn't breathe. She could smell the bitter stench of gunpowder, but she couldn't hear or see anything. And she still couldn't breathe. She opened her mouth and then the breath was there, filling her lungs, as sweet and biting as spring water, and just as cold.

  In some calm part of her mind there came not a thought but a certainty: I am dying.

  She fought to open her eyes. And suddenly they were open, and she saw the face of her Englische husband. His sweaty face was streaked with dust, his eyes were glittering brightly, and she tried to smile at him, to say his name.

  But there was a terrible pain now inside her chest, and she thought her eyes must be filling up with blood, because the world was turning red.

  Johnny.

  CHAPTER 27

  Johnny Cain sat in the dust with his wife's head in his lap, and he watched her die.

  The bullet hole in her chest bubbled blood. Her eyes widened, focusing on his, then slowly drifted closed. Her lips formed his name.

  "No, please," he tried to say. He curled his body over her and pressed his face hard into her chest. He opened and closed his mouth as if drowning, and tasted her blood.

  He felt hands pulling him off her, he heard Doc Henry saying they ought to get her inside. The boy was there too.

  He couldn't look at the boy.

  He stood up and backed out of the way, letting them have her, because she was dead now and it didn't matter, nothing mattered.

  He kept hearing in his head, over and over again, the crack of a gun firing. He kept feeling the recoil of the Colt against his hand. He kept killing her, over and over again, he saw himself killing her.

  He looked down at his hand. It was red and wet with her blood, and his gun was still there. In his hand. He'd held her and watched her die, and all the while his gun had still been in his hand.