“He'll have him a set of horns come summer's end.”
The clouds seemed to lower in the sky and those above them and to the north were growing darker, the blackness underneath seeping up on the sides, like malevolent shadows. They had not yet heard any thunder, but these were the kinds of clouds that carried that threat in their billowing folds of condensed moisture.
“You want to know what the words mean?” John asked.
“I would, Johnny. I truly would.”
“They mean this: âDo not draw me without reason, nor keep me without honor.' ”
“Why, that's right purty,” Ben said. “I never heard nothin' like it, I reckon.”
“It almost gives a life to the gun, doesn't it, Ben?”
“I don't know. Maybe. Depends on what you mean.”
“As if the gun had a mind and is telling its owner how to behave, how to act, you know?”
“Yeah, I reckon that's kind of what the words mean, all right.”
“That's what they mean. And I intend to obey them.”
“Meaning you won't draw your pistol without having a damned good reason, eh?”
“Yeah. And because my father gave it to me, I'll keep it with honor.”
Ben took another sip of coffee.
“I reckon you will, Johnny. It's the other part I'm worried about.”
“What?”
“About not drawing less'n you got good reason.”
“Oh, when I draw it, Ben, I'll have good reason. You can damned well bet on that, Mr. Russell.”
The smile was gone, if it had ever been on John's face. Instead, his visage seemed to darken like the clouds, and Ben sensed there was thunder and lightning inside of him, just waiting, like a fuse, to be touched off.
And the afternoon was coming on, like the brewing storm, when the two men finally ate without much talk between them. Later, Ben found his brother Lee's holster and gave it to John.
John strapped it on. The belt bristled with .45-caliber cartridges. John slid the pistol inside the holster and it was a perfect fit. He wore the gunbelt well, as if he were born with it, and it born to decorate him. When he stood up and drew the pistol so fast his hands were a blur, like the downward plunge of a hawk, Ben felt that icy water creep back up his spine. He had never seen anything so fast. Until John drew a second time.
“Just practicing, Ben,” he said.
“I reckon that's a reason.”
They both knew what Ben meant. The trouble was that Ben didn't know what John was practicing the fast draw for. At least he didn't for sure.
But he had a pretty good idea.
The clouds began to darken and thicken, and far off there was the murmur of thunder, so soft they almost missed hearing it. The wind turned brisk and the air was thick with the smell of rain, rain that was, just then, only a promise, not a threat.
Just like Johnny Savage, Ben thought as he put out the fire, using the spade to shovel sand and water on it, to bury it beyond redemption. They would not light another that day, nor for days to come. And their fare for tomorrow and many days hence most likely would be hardtack and deer jerky unless Ben missed his guess about John's plans.
John hadn't said a word, but Ben was getting to read him pretty well.
That pistol spoke volumes, even when it was sleeping in its holster, with those words emblazoned on its barrel. That pistol, Dan Savage's gun, was like a coiled snake, ready to strike the minute it sensed the heat of its prey.
That Savage gun.
8
THERE WAS SOMETHING BOTHERING OLIVER HOBART AS HE AND his men rode through the trees back toward their abandoned camp, which was now a prearranged rendezvous site. The creak of his saddle set off an insistent tattoo in his mind, so intrusive after the previous excitement, that he felt as if he had missed something important back at that mining camp. In the heat of battle, and the finding of the gold, the noise of the guns, there had been something else he should have seen back there.
But he didn't know what it was.
Not yet.
“Slow down, Red,” he called to the man ahead of him, who was leading the pack of them through the forest.
“Huh?” Red turned his head to look back at Ollie.
“No damned need to wear out the horses. We got a long ride ahead of us yet.”
“Oh, yeah.” Red slowed his horse as Ollie raised his hand for the others to see.
“To a walk, Red,” Ollie said.
All of the men slowed and the saddle creak shifted keys, lost its former rhythm. Now it was just a steady drone in Hobart's ear, more like the sound pond frogs made just after dusk.
A mule deer arose from its bed at the sound of the passing horses, its ears thrust forward, coned to catch and decipher the crackle of twigs, the pad of iron hooves. Its black tail twitched nervously as it stood above the dust wallow where it had lain since early morning. It resembled a large mouse with its oversized ears and gray coat. The doe lifted its head, its black nostrils poised to sniff and suction every vagrant scrap of scent that wafted its way. Through the trees it could see the legs of the passing animals, and it could smell the leather and the sweat, the horse scent and the man scent. But it held its rigid stance, tail flicking like a cat's in convulsive, jerky vibrations that were the only sign of its nervousness. The horses passed and their hoofbeats faded. It sniffed the wallow as if to mark its contours. Then it folded its forelegs and let its rump descend as it took back to its cool, soft bed in the pines.
Had Hobart seen the deer, he might have shot it. Not for food, but just for sport, just to satisfy that inner bloodlust, that fascination with death that he had owned since he was a boy with strange, compelling urges that he could not explain, but thought were normal. He killed his first cat when he was four years old, a kitten, actually, squeezing its neck with his tiny hands, shutting off its airway. He had watched it squirm and wriggle in his grasp, try desperately to escape its death. But he had mashed its throat with his thumbs, squeezing, squeezing until it grew feeble and its hind legs stopped clawing at his arms. He squeezed its neck until all movement stopped and felt a surge of heat in his veins, a satisfying drum throb at his temples, an exhilaratingly fast tempo to his heartbeat. A feeling of warmth and satisfaction suffused him. He had never forgotten that first thrill when he had taken life, nor had he since denied that lust to kill when it came over him.
Ollie never regretted killing anything, not the cats, the dogs, the birds, the wild game, and when he was almost at maturity, a girl who had called him a name for making unwanted advances. He had picked up a rock and smashed her head, thrilling to the massive amount of blood that poured from a scalp wound and trickled down her face. He had smashed her again and again, delighting in the crunching sound of her skull as it caved in, the ooze of her brains into her long yellow hair, and the glassy look in her eyes when she finally breathed her last.
Ollie added torture to his list of experiments on human beings. He tied hapless victims up, burned them with matches and cigarettes, choked them with water poured down their throats, cut them with knives so that they slowly bled to death, affording him an opportunity to observe their final moments, to exult in his power over life and death. Hobart practiced his cruelty and when he could handle a gun, he took pleasure in ending a man's life in that manner. Shooting a man to death had its own rewards. As long as he could see the light fade from his eyes, in a single second, an hour, or a day, he drew satisfaction from the killing.
And Hobart had never been caught.
They halted their horses in the clearing where they had camped before raiding the miners on the creek. The horses snorted and blew, whinnied as they recognized a former home.
“Give the gold sacks to me, Red,” Ollie said. “I'll keep them until we get to Pueblo.”
“Can't we divide it up now?” Fritz asked. “I mean, we got it and we're all here.”
“No. We'll cash in the dust in Pueblo, like we planned,” Ollie said. “Then we'll split up the money.”
“Aw, shit,” Pete Rutter complained.
“Yeah, let's do it now,” Luke Wilkins growled, his eyes lit with a feral glow.
“Shut up, all of you,” Ollie said, and his voice carried an authority that froze the men in their saddles. “What I say goes. Anybody who doesn't like it can light a shuck. But you'll go away without any dust in your poke. I mean it.”
Ollie's hand rested on the butt of his pistol. And every man there knew that none of their company could beat him to the draw.
“Anybody?” Ollie said, meeting each man's gaze with his own steely stare.
“Hell, no, Ollie. That was the agreement,” Pete said. “I just got the itch is all.”
“Well, scratch in Pueblo, Pete.”
The others laughed.
Ollie nudged his horse against Red's, held out his left hand.
“Let's have it, Red. You, too, Mort. Empty your saddlebags.”
The two men dug in their saddlebags, hefted the sacks of gold. Red handed his over, a sack at a time. Ollie slid them into one of his saddlebags, then the other, for balance.
“A goodly sum, I'd say.” Ollie gave a smirk that might have passed for a smile, were it not for the look in his pale, cold eyes, like the eyes of an albino shark, as vacant of meaning or warmth as the glass eyes of a doll.
Mort made a show of dusting his hands after he handed over the last sack to Ollie. His horse lifted its tail slightly and blurted a blast of warm methane gas that spoiled the air with its rank stench. The fart rippled for a good five or six seconds.
“Was that a comment from you, Mort?” Ollie said, mirthlessly.
“No, sir. Mine don't make no noise. And they don't make no smell, neither.”
Everyone laughed, except Ollie.
“That was a triple,” Mandrake said, jokingly. “Whooweee. It do fairly stink. What you been feedin' that horse, Mort? Frijole beans?”
Again, everyone chuckled, except Ollie. As if he were judging them, checking to see if their mirth was genuine. Or if any of them had any regrets about what they had done and what his orders were.
A Canadian jay, pale as a ghost, landed on a laurel bush several yards away. Its faded blue feathers looked almost gray. Its tail feathers went into a spasm as it cocked it head and eyed something on the ground. Ollie saw it and wished he had a scattergun in his hands. The jay, as if sensing his intentions, hopped into the air and flapped away like some ghost bird dusted by blowing snow from one of the high white peaks in the distance, where clouds soared over them like a silent cotton explosion.
Ollie fixed Luke with a stare that was as hard and cold as the snout of a bullet.
“Something I don't like about that mess back there,” Hobart said. “Luke, you and Pete were the lookouts.”
“Yeah,” Luke said. “So what?” His eyes shifted in their sockets. He knew he was almost as fast on the draw as Ollie. And he was a mite faster than anybody else. But, though he was bristling, he knew how long a split second was, and he didn't like the odds. Ollie looked ready to cut bait, for sure.
“Something I didn't like there. Can't put my finger on it real quick, but I want to go over it. With all of you.”
“Yeah, well, go ahead with it then,” Mandrake said, a veiled belligerence in his tone. “Pueblo's a long damned way, Ollie.”
“All right. How many people did we count a day ago? Two days ago? Luke?”
Luke glared at Ollie, those little pig eyes of his just catching enough sun to spark like struck flint.
“I don't know. A dozen, I reckon.”
“Well, think. Pete?”
“Yeah, a dozen, Ollie.”
“Anybody count how many we rubbed out?”
Ollie's gaze swept the assemblage.
“I counted eleven, countin' the woman and the little gal. I mean, you got to count them, don't you?”
“You counted eleven,” Ollie said, with a sarcastic twang. “Christ, Mort. How many did we count when we first started lookin' that camp over?”
Pete held up his hand and started touching the tips of his fingers.
“I know we counted 'em, Luke,” he said. “Me and you.”
“Yeah, we counted 'em for two days straight, at least.”
“And how many people were there, men, women, and kids?” Ollie asked.
Pete touched ten fingers, then another three.
“That's an unlucky number,” Pete said, as if dumbstruck by his venture into mathematics.
“What's an unlucky number?” Luke asked, irritation in his voice.
“Thirteen, Luke. We counted thirteen. Right?”
“If you say so, Pete.” Luke's eyes glittered like bright beads caught in sunlight. He avoided looking at Hobart, whose right hand had fallen to his pistol holster almost as if trained to do that when not otherwise occupied. It was not a threatening gesture, but with Ollie's massive and formidable shape and size, almost any movement he made put people on guard.
“So, thirteen people were mining that stretch of creek, and we killed, what? Eleven of them. What happened to the other two, Pete? Luke?”
Pete shrugged and dipped his head like some penitent.
Luke tossed his head to one side, a gesture that had much the same meaning as a shrug.
“Did any of you see those stairs up the side of that little bluff in back of their camp?” Ollie asked.
Three or four of the men nodded.
“What else did you see or hear this morning, Luke, when you and Pete were glassing those folks?”
“I heard what sounded like an explosion,” Pete said. “And we saw some smoke up yonder, where them steps was.”