John nodded, then signed that he would go left.
Then Ben bent his head and put his mouth close to John's ear.
“Stand behind a tree and wait,” Ben whispered.
John nodded, breath streaming through his nostrils, slow and quiet.
He walked to a tree, taking his time, setting his feet down, finding firm footing, then advancing the other foot. He got behind a pine tree and held his rifle pointed upward, his thumb on the hammer. He had already levered a cartridge into the firing chamber and the hammer was on half cock.
There was another short silence before John heard anything else. A very small twig crackled. Hardly noticeable, but enough to jangle John's nerves and sound warning klaxons in his brain.
He heard a quick shuffle, as if someone had dashed from one tree to the next. He peered around the tree, trying to see movement in the gloom of the cloudy day, the heavy shadows of the trees.
A quail piped a short whistle. That was off to his right. Only John knew it was not a quail. There was an answering call to his left. Then another scurry of feet, and he saw movement. It took him a second or two to realize that he had seen the figure of a man, advancing toward him on foot. The man carried a weapon of some sort. Either a rifle or shotgun. He couldn't be sure.
He looked behind him, but saw only his and Ben's horses. There was no sign of Ben.
Were there only two men?
John wondered.
Had they ridden into an ambush? Were all eight killers just waiting to shoot them to ribbons?
The seconds crawled by, like small eternities stretching into a dark infinity.
The waiting was agony for John.
He pulled his head back, but kept the image of where he had seen the man locked tight in his mind. He wondered how he could draw the man into the open, turn the tables on him and surprise him. He knew there would only be a split second to aim and fire his rifle. And, if there were any small branches between him and his target, the bullet could deflect and miss its mark. That had happened to him more than once when hunting deer. He had been forced to learn to see not only the deer, but all the space between the animal and the muzzle of his rifle.
There was another slight sound a few yards in front of him. The man had scraped his shoulder or his leg against a tree. That's what it had sounded like, John thought.
He drew a shallow breath, held it. His thumb worried the scored top of the hammer. He slid down the length of the tree until he was squatting. His knees jutted out, as did part of his rump. But he figured the man would be looking for him to be standing up, and might not look toward the ground at all.
John nearly jumped out of his skin as he heard a loud explosion off to his right. The sound was one he knew. Ben's Henry had spoken and the noise was deafening.
He heard a muffled shout and peered from behind the tree, looking up to where he had last seen the man heading toward him.
“Pete,” the man called, and John saw him step out from behind a tree.
He knew that face, even in the murky light; John knew that one of the killers was standing less than twenty-five yards from him, his body partially concealed by brush, but his head tilted upward. His face clearly visible.
Something came unwound inside John. He squeezed the forestock of his rifle. He pulled gently on the trigger as he pushed the hammer back, cocking the rifle, making only a small sound as the action engaged.
One shot. That's probably all he would get, John thought.
His brain raced with images, the jumbled formula of a plan that could get him killed. In between the layers of thought, a scratching of a warning finger, a small word of caution unspoken, but understood.
A rifle cracked and he heard the whine of a bullet as it caromed off a solid object. Then, the heavy
boom
of the Henry again and this time he heard its echoes before the sound died away.
John made his decision.
He took another breath, then rolled away from the tree, throwing himself headlong on the ground. He found himself plunged into an alien world where dragons spewed flame and nightmares came into being out of some cavernous dungeon deep in the recesses of his mind. Two explosions shattered the taut silence in his brain.
In that first instant, when he was exposed, lying flat on the ground, putting the butt of his rifle to his shoulder, a giant pair of iron doors swung wide open.
His blood froze.
The gates of Hell opened.
Fire and brimstone rained down on him.
10
LUKE WILKINS TOUCHED OFF BOTH TRIGGERS. HIS DOUBLE-BARRELED shotgun roared, spewing bright orange flame and buckshot straight at the tree where John had been standing moments before. Lead sprayed a hailstorm of death in a six-foot-wide pattern. The balls ripped through pine bark, tore needles and branches from the tree, ripped through the underbrush, scything foliage into shreds.
John fired his Winchester, aiming straight at the twin flowers of flame. He dropped his rifle and rolled to the left, snatching his Colt from his holster, cocking the single-action weapon as it cleared the holster. He heard the deadly thrash of shot shearing through the brush, the smack of lead balls against tree trunks.
He saw the shotgunner stagger into the lingering cloud of smoke. He jumped to his feet before the man could reload and charged toward him. The man dropped his shotgun and clawed for his pistol, a blue-black hole in his left leg, near the groin.
John stopped and fired his Colt, aiming for the man's heart. But Luke's left leg gave way and tilted him sideways, so the bullet from John's gun struck his right shoulder, spun him like a top. His pistol slipped from his hand. John hammered back and took two steps, fired point-blank at the man's belt buckle. He heard the sickening slap of the bullet as it struck flesh square in the man's bellybutton, caving his midsection in, collapsing him like a man performing knee bends. The man sagged and pitched forward with a grunt of pain, blood spilling from his gut, jetting from his shoulder in measured, heart-pumping bursts.
John ran to the man, slid a boot under his chest, and flipped him over. He cocked the Colt and shoved its snout forward until it butted up against the man's forehead. He reached down, jerked the man's pistol from its holster and tossed it out of reach.
“You're the one they call Luke,” John said.
Luke batted his eyes. They were laced with pain. He held both hands over the hole in his belly and blood seeped through the spread fingers, painting his hands so that they resembled a white-and-crimson-striped fan.
“Where are the rest of them?” John barked.
“You don't kilt me,” Luke said.
“Not yet, you bastard. Where are the others?”
“Gone,” Luke croaked. “Help me.”
“I'll help you, Luke. Just tell me where your friends went.”
“Fountain,” Luke said.
“Fountain Creek?”
“Yeah.”
“Then where? Where do you meet them?”
“Fuck you,” Luke said, his pig eyes narrowing under hooded lids.
“I'll help you, same as you helped my family, Luke,” John said, his voice measured, low, menacing.
Luke's eyes opened wide. A spasm of pain coursed through his body. Both men could smell his ruptured intestines. The odor was as foul as a barnyard or a feedlot. The stench caused Luke to crinkle his nose and even that small movement made him wince in pain. His breathing became more labored. Blood spurted from his shoulder and leg wounds with every few beats of his heart. The color that suffused his face began to fade. His complexion turned to the color of dough. His lips began to turn slightly blue as he struggled to breathe.
“Shoot me,” Luke begged. “Just go ahead and shoot me.”
“Be merciful, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“I want you to think about that little girl, Luke. My sister. And the woman. My mother. Think about them and all the others while you leak blood through your miserable guts. Think about the mercy you showed them, you pathetic sonofabitch.”
“Ahhh,” Luke breathed.
John raised his foot and ground the heel into Luke's crotch.
Luke screamed in agony.
There was a commotion in the brush off to John's right. Footsteps. He turned and swung his pistol toward the sounds.
Luke fixed his gaze on John's pistol, on the silver inlay, the ivory grips. His wet eyes widened, tried to focus as his life leaked slowly away.
Ben emerged from tree and cloud shadows, the receiver of his Yellow Boy gleaming like a miniature sunrise, as if he held a bar of freshly minted gold in his hand. His face was contorted in pain and he limped into full view.
“You hurt?” John's expression registered concern.
“Twisted my blamed ankle chasin' after that other'n. He got clean away.”
“I thought I heard someone yelling, like he was hurt.”
“That could have been me. Could have been him. I think I nicked him.”
“Get a good look at him?” John asked.
“No. He lit a shuck. Ran like a scared rabbit. I twisted my ankle and had to give up on him. What you got here?”
Ben looked down at Luke and swore under his breath.
“God, Johnny, what're you doing to him?”
“Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“Heâhe's waitin' for me to die, the bastard,” Luke said, a malevolent glare in his narrowed eyes. “Torturin' me. You shoot me, mister. I'm done for.”
Ben lifted his rifle.
John put a hand on the barrel and pushed it down.
“No,” John said. “I'm going to tell Luke here about my family.”
“What?” Ben said.
“Find yourself a seat under a tree. Get off that ankle.”
Ben hobbled to a pine, rested against it, and slid to the ground. He laid the Henry across his lap, pushed his hat back off his forehead.
John squatted next to Luke, holding the pistol up so the wounded man could see it, see that it was cocked, see that his finger was just a breath away from the trigger.
“You killed my little sister, Luke. You or one of your ugly friends. She wasn't but ten years old. Her name was Alice. She had the prettiest hair, golden hair, like spun honey.”
“I didn't kill that kid,” Luke said.
“Shut up, Luke,” John said amiably, his eyes glittering like the eyes of the mad, like the eyes of a predator watching its prey.
“She played with dolls, made up little stories about them, and she pretended that they were real people. They were her friends and she made tea for them and mudpies and fed them like a mother spoon-feeds a real baby.”
“Don't,” Luke said, a pleading note in his voice.
There was a sound like an empty barrel rolling across the floor of a cavernous room. Thunder rolling across the skies, the sound pushing through thick black clouds like an immense voice shouting through layers of cotton. And the sound died away, leaving a hush behind, and a darker darkness.
“She had the prettiest laugh, Luke. She said her dolls made her laugh. And she would draw pictures of them on paper and show her pictures to them, and sometimes it seemed so real, I thought her dolls were laughing with her. She found a little bird once, down in Arkansas, and it had a broken wing. She took that bird and put in a little box and told her dollies to help her take care of it. She put medicine on its wing and one of her dolls was a nurse and she had that little birdie hopping around in no time. That's how kind she was. That's how she treated God's creatures. When the bird got well and flew away, Alice just laughed and laughed, and she told her dolls how much they had helped that poor bird.”
“Stop,” Luke croaked. “No more. Please. I'm dyin'.”
“Alice is already dead, Luke. She was shot to pieces by you and your men. I buried her with her favorite doll. They're both in the cold ground. And you ain't even goin' to get that, you miserable sonofabitch. You're going to feed the wolves and the worms.”
Luke gasped for air. His eyes rolled wildly in their sockets.
Ben sat there, aghast at what John was doing.
None of them heard the man creeping up on them. Pete Rutter had heard the voices. He had circled around, slowly and carefully, so that he had a clear view of the three men. Now he stared dumbstruck at the three of them through a pair of binoculars. He was close enough to hear what they were saying, but he knew he could not be seen. He watched and he listened.
Then he saw the pistol in John's hand. His jaw dropped as he focused the binoculars, brought the pistol up large enough to see the silver inlay, the image sharp in the lenses of his glasses.
He looked at Luke.
Blood dripped from Luke's shoulder and there was a large stain on his midsection, another on his leg. His face looked pale, his features threaded with pain.
He had seen enough. There was no saving Luke and he was outnumbered. One of the old fellow's bullets had struck his rifle, knocked the sights off. The young feller and the old guy were too far away for a pistol shot.
His heart pounding, Pete retreated, found his horse, and led him for some distance before he mounted him and stole away through the dark trees, heading toward Fountain Creek. Ollie would be mad as hell, but he wasn't going to stick around and face up to the young one. The one with the fancy pistol, the one who was torturing Luke and enjoying himself while Luke lay there, bleeding to death, his guts poking out of his abdomen like oily blue snakes.
Lightning flashed and there was a thundercrack that made four men jump inside their skins.
Thunder pealed across the sky and behind it the nattering whisper of rain, steaming down the mountainside, great sheets of it blown south and east by the wind.