“How am I s’posed to say for certain where you are or how you’re faring?” she broke in sharply. “Whether you’re still above ground or below it . . . how the hell am I s’posed to know? Am I s’posed to wait for it to come out in the papers? ‘Gabriel Kings, the notorious bandit, killed by a hundred sheriffs!’ ”
Her tears finally brimmed but she kept charge of herself. Kings gently smoothed a hand over her hair, murmuring to her as if he were speaking to a spooked horse. “It’s all right, darlin’. You oughta know by now it’s some difficult to kill me. Haven’t I always turned up?”
“Yeah,” she said, almost grudgingly, “you have.”
“No hangman’s gonna rob me of spending the rest of my life with you, don’t you know that?”
It was the first time he had ever used those words when speaking of their future. Before, it had variously been “the time we’ve got” or “as long as I can.” Belle did not fail to notice the change in phrasing. She caught her breath and said with bitterness, “Your life? My God, how much longer is that apt to be, Gabriel? My daddy thinks highly of you, but you know as well as I do that he’d never walk me down an aisle with you at the end of it.”
“Let’s cross that crick when we come to it,” Kings said in a way that put an end to the subject. He started rocking again. Gradually, when the fever had passed, she lowered her head to its resting place on his chest and again found temporary comfort.
She closed her eyes, and the words drifted from her lips. “I love you, Gabriel Kings.”
He sighed deeply through his nose, and that was enough for her. Not a man of flowery speech, her outlaw. In the silence she felt his body begin to respond to the press of her weight. Then, “I always thought you looked mighty fetchin’ in black.”
She clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle her laughter, and to him the sound was more than worth the hard ride it took to get there.
The following morning found Kings walking down by the corrals, attended by two little girls who clung to his fingers like leeches. He dodged a swarm of marriage proposals, saying that he did not imagine their papá would give his blessing. And then Teresa, who was sharper than most her age, pointed out that their mother had gotten married when she was only fourteen. The outlaw laughed and swore that in another five years or so, he would ride back and see if they still wanted to marry him then.
Both girls assured him they would.
Well-rested and lethargic from a large breakfast of tortillas, beans, and chorizo con huevos, he felt like a new man. This ranch’s gate had always been open to him, and every time he splashed through the shallows of the slow-running Frio, it felt like coming home. The Jacksons had been friendly to him when friendliness was not expected, and the daughter of the Old Man had been a point of light in his black world.
There was a chill in the air. He reckoned that by sundown, the temperature would dip to at least fifty degrees, maybe even the high forties. As a Virginia man, Kings was accustomed to cold, having seen his share of frozen rivers and snow that fell on a slant, but there was something different about the cold that came with the howling winds of Texas, with no mountains to slow them down.
He dropped into a squat and reached back to slide his big knife from its sheath. Though he expected no trouble here, he always went about the ranch fully armed—except when in the parlor or dining room. His weapons had become as much a part of him as his arms and legs.
With this extra appendage he began slicing away at a stick, all the while listening to the girls chatter. They told him stories in a language he hardly understood—of wise old shamans and talking desert animals and a ghostly woman who wailed at riverside—but he smiled and listened with open ears, nodding every so often as if he knew exactly what they were talking about. Encouraged, they jabbered on.
Titus Jackson, John Bevans, and Fernando Elías rode by on cutting ponies to inspect the roaming herd. The major was expecting a detachment of cavalrymen from Fort Clark within a day or two. It was already understood that when the bluecoats came for their remounts, Kings and his men would roost up in the barn and stay there until the transaction was concluded. Not a sweating matter, not even a gun-packing matter. Many were the soldiers who had come within touching distance of Gabriel Kings and not known it.
When he had finished his carving, Kings presented little Sofía with the result—a hollow flute that chirped like a songbird and brought a smile to her face. Though her sickness from the night before had been attributed by her mother to a bit of under-cooked chicken, Kings hoped the rare gift would speed her recovery. It had the desired effect. Sofía whirled away from her sister, waving her gift like a baton, and Teresa skipped along after, halfheartedly clawing at the hem of the smaller girl’s dress.
This was a good place. A damned good place.
He looked around at the large frame house, at the big barn. Across the way, windmill blades creaked. There was an overpowering smell of hay, manure, and honest work about the property, and it did a man good to breathe in those things every now and again. It had been years since Kings had done so.
It stirred within him old sentiments, but ones he’d considered with greater frequency over the last year. He ought to put his six-guns away, get a spread like this somewhere, raise a few head . . . It was one thing to dream, he told himself, and another to hope. A pardon from Governor Hubbard, let alone President Hayes, was as likely a reality as flying mule deer.
He turned his head at the sound of the major’s approach—that slow, leisurely advance of a man delighting in a home built with his own hands. The two hounds came with him, slithering under the bottom corral rung to lick Kings’s fingers and press up against him. Jackson was jamming tobacco into a long-stemmed pipe, and when he spoke, it was as if they had been talking for hours.
“I’ve had these dogs a long time now,” he said, “but I had one back home that was first-rate at tracking anything that walked or crawled. Finer even than these two. Had a nose on him for smells like a banker’s got a nose for money. Name was Reliable, and he earned it. I expect I treated that ol’ boy better’n some folks treat their own tads, sad to say. But, you know, as fine as you can treat a hound of this breed, they always seem to mope around with these terribly sad eyes.”
He paused a moment to light his pipe. “You’ve got a hound’s eyes on you, son,” he said, after a few puffs, “and I can’t say as I recall seein’ any other kind on you. Ever.”
Kings was in no hurry to respond. Still scratching dogs with either hand, he merely tipped his head up to meet his fellow Virginian’s frank, open expression.
“You feel short on time?” Jackson asked.
“Shorter than I was last year.”
“You ever study on bowin’ out?”
The outlaw chuckled and finally pushed the dogs away. “More’n once, Major. But I’ve been playin’ a rough game, and it’s some easier to study on bowin’ out than it is to do it.”
Gone fishing, Jackson decided to add a few more inches to his line. “Ever study on gettin’ hitched?” He sucked on his pipe, eyeing Kings to see if he registered any change. Unfortunately for him, the younger man had become adept at sidling his way out of condemning interrogations, and so parried the old soldier’s thrust with little effort.
“I won’t deny it’s always been an ambition,” Kings said slowly. “Then again, they say the married man gets buried sooner’n the wife. Makes a body think twice.”
Seeing it would be pointless to pursue the question, Jackson chose to concede this skirmish. There would be another day.
“Looks like the weather’s finally gonna break,” he said, squinting skyward. “Old Man Winter’s been holdin’ the storm off longer’n usual this year.”
Kings was struggling to stay in the present. His thoughts wanted to stray back to the night before—to the first truly restful night in some time. He and Belle had made brief but passionate love, out of the light of the moon on the dark side of the house, years of practice muting the action to near inaudibility. After
ward, when Belle had started to nod off against his chest, the night growing colder around them, he nudged her awake, kissed her forehead, and held the door open for her. She went back inside and he to the barn loft with a smile on his lips. But, like countless nights before, he went to his blankets alone.
“Skeery thing,” Jackson was saying. “I’ve found the longer something takes to get here, worse it is when it finally starts.”
The statement struck Kings as strangely prophetic.
CHAPTER 14
It hadn’t been easy, giving that pack of lawdogs the slip, and it had taken time, but the fact was, he’d done it.
Going on a week ago Zeller lost sight of them through the glass of his telescope, having had little sleep and plenty of long, hard hours playing mental and geological chess with his pursuers. When he did close his eyes he only dozed, and when he did swing down it was to give his mare a breather and a drink from a hatful of tepid canteen water. That old girl deserved a month off on good grama, and she would get it.
Whoever they were, they knew the lay of the land as well as Zeller did, if not better. Still, however familiar they were with the terrain and however skilled at reading it, they had never used it the same way their quarry did. They were lawmen. He was an outlaw. They rode by the light of day and on the open prairie, he rode by the light of the moon and kept to the back trails and forgotten byways. There had been times when they had him sweating hard. But whereas the possemen, dogged though they were, stopped each night to rest their horses and replenish their energy, Zeller and his long-winded mare—veterans of innumerable chases like this one—pushed on.
It hadn’t been easy, but he’d lost them. He could only hope the lawmen kept on the way they were going and didn’t pick up his trail again.
He nearly fell on his face when he dismounted in the yard. No horses in the corral, no smoke or light from the cabins, but he was too run-down to care. He pulled his knife, cut the mare’s cinch, and tore the saddle from her back. With the butt of his rifle, Zeller smashed the thin layer of ice that had formed over the water in the trough. He watched with satisfaction as his horse guzzled. After she’d had her fill and turned sluggishly away, it was his turn. Dropping to his knees, he blew on the water before drinking. As it was, he felt icicles stab his brain, but he had ridden through hell just to taste this water again, to feel this canyon’s air again. It was a good pain.
He heated four pails’ worth of water inside the main cabin, which he then poured into a tub. The water wasn’t as hot as he would have liked, but he couldn’t wait any longer and sank like a rock up to his ears. He soaked for hours, warming his chilled flesh, cauterizing and bathing his wound.
After he reckoned he’d soaked enough, Zeller stood to take a speculative look around the room, running fingers through his beard. He decided against a shave and got drunk instead.
The following morning he stumbled out of the cabin into the light of a bleak autumn afternoon. Not caring for it, he stepped back into the semi-darkness and got a fire crackling on the hearth. After that, he flicked a scattering of dead grass and debris from the threshold that had blown in when he opened the door.
It had struck him as a bit odd to have come back to such emptiness—where the hell were the others, and what motivated such a swift departure? There hadn’t been any jobs scheduled, as far as he could recollect, and he hadn’t found any note explaining where they’d gone. Then again, he hadn’t exactly searched high and low for one.
He pushed those thoughts from his mind. Wherever they were, they’d be back. Besides, he could use the peace and quiet.
At the table, Zeller sat down with a weathered war bag full of hand tools to carry out a routine of his, a loving ceremony he performed after every ride. He cleaned the residue from the barrels of his disassembled Peacemakers, oiled the holsters, shaved away the rough edges from the sandalwood grips—anything that needed doing, he did, and any aspect that needed tidying, he tidied. He’d scarcely cheated death, but he would make sure that when his time finally came, by God, he would give his killers a show—whether they wanted it or not, and let them fight hard to bring him down.
When he finished with this business, he chopped wood through the rest of the daylight hours, during which a light snow powdered the landscape. So long as he had the time, he figured he might as well get reacquainted with the chores he’d left behind on the dairy farm of his youth, and those he’d largely neglected as a professional outlaw. He swept out both cabins, forked fresh hay into stalls, and brought his mare in before nightfall.
That evening, whittling by the fire, he picked up the sound of horses moving in the yard. He breathed a sigh of relief. That would be the boys. Zeller resumed his whittling, adding to the shavings between his feet, but after several minutes, he wondered why no one had come in yet. Then he heard the barn door clacking from across the yard. Strange . . .
He called out twice, trying Kings’s name and Brownwell’s, too, before he decided to go and see about it. There was something unnerving about the silence broken only by the sound of the door, so he set the knife down and tucked one of his guns under his belt. Taking up the lantern, he went out into the chill November night.
Zeller limped across the icy space, eyeing the ground for hoofprints and finding them. Shifting the lantern to his left hand, he gave the knotty planks a bump and entered the barn. Huffing streams of vapor, he hung the lantern on a nail and heard the firm, resolute footfall of a man stepping out of a stall and into the aisle. Zeller turned. The man was tall, wide, and unfamiliarly shaped.
“Kings?”
There was another sound to his left, a quick shuffle, and Zeller was moving with it when the gun butt made contact from above. It was dark in the barn, however, and the blow didn’t land as precisely as his attacker would have liked. Gushing blood from just above the occipital bone, Zeller was still conscious when he hit his knees.
“How ’bout that?” he heard someone mutter, seemingly miles away. “Looks like we got us Dave Zeller.”
He felt two pairs of rough hands heaving him to his feet, then going under each armpit to drag his limp body back to the cabin. Next thing he knew, they had bent him over the table, patting him down before relieving him of his weapon. One of the hands clamped down on his shoulder, forcing him into a chair at the head of the table.
Head throbbing, Zeller opened his eyes to find the world around him tilting this way and that. His vision was blurry, but he wouldn’t have recognized any of his assailants anyway.
Somehow, he found the strength to be defiant. “I’ll tell you sonsabitches what,” he said, closing his eyes once more, “I been smacked harder for skimmin’ the cream.”
“Oh, I wish we coulda met under friendlier circumstances,” Frank Wingate said, affecting a smile. He pulled out the chair to Zeller’s left and sat down. Zeller recognized his voice as the one he’d heard in the barn, and thought that it must have been his pistol whose sting he’d felt. “But we are where we are. Ain’t we, Yankee Dave?”
Across the room, Henry Coleman was leaning into the fireplace, tossing chunks of wood onto the flame. Jack Lightfoot stood at the far end, directly across from Zeller, watching him with great interest. There was something sick about this man, Zeller decided, but he wasn’t quite sure what.
He turned his attention back to Wingate but someone slapped a hand to the scruff of his neck and squeezed hard. Zeller winced as Dan Carver bent low, his voice oddly lilting as he spoke. “Lemme cut his throat right now, Frank. Lemme cut ’im ear to ear and see if that don’t change his tune.”
Wingate glanced up from emptying Zeller’s guns. “All in good time, Dan, all in good time. For now, let the man go.” He flipped the loading gate shut on one pistol, took up the other. “When d’you figure Kings’ll be back, Yankee Dave?”
Zeller blinked as Carver unhappily released his grip. “It don’t matter,” he said. “You’ll all be dead before he gets here.”
He stared at Wingate calmly, but the smaller
man had something to say about that. Quick as a viper, he backhanded Zeller across the face and he toppled over, landing hard with a streak of blood horizontal across his cheek. The adrenaline rush of being struck in the nose nearly freed him from the pounding between his ears, but Zeller took a moment, then slowly rose to his hands and knees.
“And who’s gonna be doin’ the killin’, Yankee Dave?” Wingate sneered down at him. “You? I’d like to see you try.”
“Aw, don’t play with him, Frank,” Lightfoot whined. “Let’s just kill ’im and string his carcass up outside. Be a nice homecomin’ gift for Mr. Kings, I’d say.”
Zeller got to his feet, his features unreadable as he wiped the blood on his sleeve. He looked at Wingate, then away from him to Carver, whose grimace gave way to a brutish grin.
“I got me a better idea, Jack,” Carver said and started toward Zeller. The deliberation of his approach and the way he held his left hand away from his side forced Yankee Dave to make a preemptive decision.
It wasn’t hard.
“Well, fellas,” he sighed, stopping Carver short, “if this is a get-to-know-ya, let’s get to gettin’.”
Zeller lunged at Carver. With one hand he ripped the man’s gun free, then shoved him hard against the table’s edge with the other. In his haste, Zeller fumbled with the hammer spur and shot lower than he meant to. Still, he managed to drill Carver in the stomach. He swung the pistol to the right, fluid this time, and fired again. The long barrel blossomed with a stab of hot light and Coleman twisted, blood spurting from his arm.
Zeller triggered a third shot at Wingate that missed and thunked, ripping a gash through the tabletop. Still clutching one of Zeller’s emptied pistols, Wingate took his time. He half-turned, planting his feet, leveled his Smith & Wesson Schofield, and shot twice into Zeller’s body from a distance of five yards.
Zeller was thrown back against the wall, then slumped down into a seated position. The lifeblood was seeping out of him, warming his middle and showing at the corner of his mouth, but there was a strange look on his face. He did not seem to be in pain—rather, it was as if a shadow of joy had come over him, joy at having killed one of the bastards and wounded another.
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