“My mother, her name was Clare,” John continued, “was the sweetest person I ever knew. She had a heart of gold and used to read stories to me at night. Even when she was tired from working all day, she'd tuck me and my sister Alice in bed every night and tell us stories until our eyelids got heavy and droopy and we fell asleep. She made my father Dan happy, too. And he doted on her. He treated her like a queen, and she treated him like a king. That was my mother, Luke, and she's lying in the ground, too, all of her stories dead on her lips.”
“I can't take no more,” Luke said. “Please don't tell me no more about them people.”
“Them people, Luke? Why, you don't deserve to breathe the same air they did. You killed them. For what? Some gold that you'll spend on whores and whiskey? Buy yourself a new pair of boots, or a saddle? Spend money you didn't earn and took from truly good people? People you murdered, you bastard.”
“It was Ollie,” Luke said. “He made us do it.”
“Ollie?”
“Hobart. He put us up to it.”
“Well, I can't wait to meet Ollie Hobart,” John said. “At the business end of this Colt in my hand. I wonder how brave he's going to be. As brave as you, you sniveling little shit?”
“John, you done said enough,” Ben said.
They could hear the rain now, off in the distance, and there was lightning close by, stitching jagged lines of silver in the black clouds, striking the ground as thunderclaps boomed in their ears and echoed through the canyons, off the high rimrock, and off into desolate nothingness.
The fissure in Luke's belly had widened and coils of intestines were easing out. They glistened like water snakes or nightcrawlers. The hole in his abdomen had grown larger, probably from the time John had put his boot on his testicles, forcing Luke to react.
“Ben, bring up the horses and shake our slickers, will you?” John said. “Can you manage with that game ankle?”
“Yeah. I can manage.” Ben got to his feet, resting against the tree for support. “How much longer you going to rag this poor bastard?”
“Just a while longer, Ben. Go on. That rain's going to hit us pretty quick.”
“Yeah. I'll get the horses.”
Ben hobbled off, using his rifle as a crutch.
“Luke, you still here?”
Luke had closed his eyes. His breathing was shallow and there were rales in it, as if his throat had filled with sand.
Luke opened his eyes.
“Yeah, you bastard.” Raspy, weak, that was Luke's voice now. He had not long to live, John thought.
“I'll put you out of your misery if you tell me where Ollie and the others are going. Where they're going to hole up and wait for you.”
“You won't do it.”
“Yes, I will. One little squeeze of the trigger and your lamp goes out. Real quick. Real painless. Just tell me what I want to know and it'll be over just like that. You won't even feel the bullet.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah, you can pray, too, Luke. And go on suffering. I don't mind that. I'm suffering. Let me tell you about Pa, Dan Savage. We haven't got to him yet, but he was a man to ride the river with, Luke. Best father a boy could have. Hunted with him, fished with him, farmed with him, broke bread with him at my mother's fine table, with my little sister right by his side every night, adoring him as much as my mother did.”
“No more, Savage.”
“Oh, there's a lot more, Luke. There's my pa, and my uncle. Yeah, you killed him, too. And Ben's brother. Maybe he'll tell you about his brother, Leland; we called him Lee. A hell of a guy.”
“Pueb . . .”
“What's that, Luke?”
“Pueblo,” Luke gasped. “Ollie. Goin' to Pueblo.”
“Ah, Pueblo. And, where in Pueblo were you going to meet him?”
“Can . . .”
“Can't hear you, Luke.”
“Cantina.”
“What's the name of the cantina, Luke? Hell, we're almost there. You won't have to bear the awful pain much longer. Just tell me the name of the cantina.”
Luke convulsed as pain shot through his innards like molten fire. He sucked in a breath and the air stayed in his lungs a long time, as if it was never going to come out.
“Rosa,” Luke growled, as if the sand in his throat had turned to gravel. “Rosa's Cantina. On Calle Vaca. Now, do it, Savage. Do what you done promised.”
Ben rode up, leading John's horse. Lightning swept the sky in jagged streaks, the thunder following almost immediately, a great roaring in the sky, a thousand cannons belching at once, cannonballs rolling across the hollow deck of a huge ship and fading into the distance, like the faint echoes of long-ago storms.
Ben had his slicker on, and he held John's in his hand.
“Here you go, John,” Ben said. When John looked up, Ben tossed the wadded raincoat down at John. It landed next to him, in a crumpled heap, like a yellow bird fallen from the sky.
Luke groaned.
John picked up his slicker, stood up. He slid his arms through it and snugged it up.
“Now?” Luke said. “You goin' to send me on my way now, Savage? I done told you want you want to know.”
John looked down at Luke. His face bore almost no expression.
“Do you know what penance is, Luke?”
“No. Just get it over with, will you?”
“Penance is the price you pay for your sins. That's what the preacher told us. Now, that's what you're going to do now. You're going to do penance.”
John picked up Luke's pistol and tucked it inside his belt.
Then he climbed on his horse.
“You just going to leave him, Johnny?” Ben said.
“Yeah, Ben. I ain't no cold-blooded killer like old Luke there. I shot him in a fair fight, and that's as far as I'll go. This day, anyways.”
“You know something, Johnny?”
“Something?”
“You got all the makings of a real bastard.”
John turned Gent and began to ride away as the first stalks of rain speared through the pine branches, splattering on their slickers. A lightning flash splashed across Luke's face, a face frozen in terror. Rain spattered into his mouth and eyes and he tried to sit up. He stretched out a hand as if reaching for something. Something that was no longer there. Then he fell back. There was an ominous rattle in his throat and the breath he expelled was his last.
“You ain't got a bit of mercy in you, Johnny,” Ben said as they rode away, heading east, away from the creek, away from all the deaths of that sullen and sorrowful day.
John said nothing. He knew he was not satisfied at all.
There were still seven killers left. Seven bad men still alive.
And, no, he thought, there was no mercy in him.
11
BEN PULLED ON THE REINS. DYNAMITE CAME TO A HALT. THE DAPPLED gray gelding whickered and tossed its head as raindrops needled its eyes. John stopped when Gent came up alongside.
“You want that shotgun, Johnny?” He pointed to the ground.
John looked down at Luke's scattergun.
“No, let it rust,” he said.
“Perfectly good weapon. We might could use it.”
Raindrops spattered on the twin barrels, the stock. Specks of bright red blood turned brown and ran off the metal and wood, swirling in lazy curlicues along the length of the barrel and stock. The sight reminded John of a time when he had cut his finger with a knife. His mother had held his hand over a white bowl and poured water on the wound. The blood had dripped into the bowl first, then the water had turned it brown as it diluted it. He had been fascinated by his own blood and the way the water had mixed with it, taken away its redness.
“It's got blood on it,” John said.
“Yeah, that feller's blood.”
“No. I mean different.”
Ben nodded. “Yeah, maybe. What about that pistol you took offen him?”
“He didn't use it on our people. I might use it on his.”
Ben shook his head and tapped Dynamite's flanks with his spurs. The horse stepped ahead and they rode through the rain.
“Still want to track them fellers?” Ben asked, raising his voice above the blowing rain.
“Yeah. I want to know as much about them as I can. Where they camped, for one thing.”
“We'll pick up their trail.”
John searched the ground for the remnants of tracks, and found them, the depressions filling up with water, but still visible.
“This must have been where they camped,” Ben said, as lightning blistered the clouds with jagged bolts. The clearing lit up like a stage set and John saw the places where they had put their bedrolls, concave depressions in the earth. Their fire ring was black with ashes and charred wood. It was filling up with water, floating some of the burnt chips and splinters of firewood up to the surface.
Thoughts, a myriad of them, flooded John's brain as he scanned the camp. He knew the outlaws must have been there for more than a day or two. There was a smell to it now, as if the scents had been stirred up by the rain. He detected the odors of sweat and horsehair, of burnt wood and dead pine needles. And there was the musky scent of moss and the faint fragrance of blue spruce mingled with the pungent aroma of horse manure and urine, along with human offal. A feeling of disgust rose up in him that they had been so near, watching them, planning their hideous murders, breathing the same mountain air.
“How far, Ben? A mile or two from our camp?”
“Maybe that much. Hard to tell in this rain. I lost all landmarks when we got jumped back there.”
“Too close, anyway.”
“Yeah, Johnny. Too damned close.”
“Let's follow the tracks out of here for as long as we can, then get out from under this damned rain.”
“You find out anything from that Luke feller?”
“Yeah. Unless he was lying.”
“Know where they're headed?”
“He said Pueblo.”
“Makes sense. Cash in the dust and nuggets, light out north or south. Taos or Santa Fe. Colorado Springs, Denver. Cheyenne, maybe.”
“Ever hear of a place called Rosa's Cantina?”
“Nope. I never heard of any cantina in Pueblo or anywhere else. You?”
“No. Luke said they were supposed to meet up there. It's on Calle Vaca.”
“Sounds like he told you a lot.”
“He didn't tell me enough, Ben.”
“What do you mean?”
John slapped his horse on the rump with his reins and put the spurs to his tender flanks.
“He didn't say he was sorry.”
The lightning stopped after a while, and the thunder faded in the distance. They rode through lashing rain, following pools of horse tracks, then even these vanished. Luckily, the wind-driven rain was at their backs as they angled through the range of mountains on a course for Fountain Creek.
They rode through curtains of liquid crystal, following game trails that shed some water, giving their horses better footing, and through misty trees that muffled the sound of the wind-whipped rain that beat on their slickers like a thousand clocks ticking. Vapors arose from the floor of the forests, mists lingered in the groves of blue spruce and junipers and firs. Little rivers carved small gullies in the earth, and once they smelled bear scat and saw a juniper ripped by an elk's antlers. The wood was splintered and torn as if it had been struck by an exploding artillery shell, blasted to ruin by a rutting bull elk, in another autumn.
“We'll be stumblin' around in the dark here pretty quick,” Ben said, just before dusk. The little daylight that was left was beginning to dim, shrinking away with every foot of gained ground.
“Yeah, I been looking for a place to hole up,” John said. “We should have brought a tarp, so's we could make a lean-to.”
“We can cut us a shelter with spruce branches,” Ben said.
“Let's do it.”
“We'll stay to high ground. Could be flash floods down in the bottoms of those canyons and ravines.”
John nodded and they began to search for a suitable place to build a shelter. They were on a high ridge. They could feel the mountains around them, but could not see them. The wind howled and blew great sheets into them and across their path, cutting down their visibility. The wind made sounds in the trees and on the rimrock that sounded like the keening of lost souls, a shrieking that could drive a man to madness if it lasted long enough.
John knew how dangerous it was now. They could be following a trail that traversed a sheer drop on one or both sides. They could only see a few feet on either side. He looked for clumps of trees just off the trail. Raindrops stung his eyes when he looked, and from the whip of the wind, he knew they were exposed on some high ridge.
Ben spotted the trees as the trail descended. He pointed off to the right and turned his horse in that direction. John followed him, a lightness in his heart now that they were escaping the brunt of the wind and rain.
“Plenty of spruce and fir in here,” Ben said as they rode into a grove of various-sized trees. They had passed a pair of stunted pines moments before, so knew that they had been on an exposed ridge, where the wind flattened their slickers against their backs and chests as it circled like a lion tamer cracking whips in an arena. The spruce trees were thick with branches and foliage, which shielded them from the brunt of the wind and knifing rain.
They tied the horses to small stunted pines where they were somewhat sheltered. Ben picked out a spruce tree and the two men began to shear off the lower branches, stacking them into two neat piles. Ben told John when to stop and they moved to the next spruce, trimming the lower limbs, and piling these up in separate piles. They left the top branches intact. They moved in a circle, trimming spruce trees, leaving a space among them for their bedrolls.