And the Hills Opened Up (19 page)

They woke the Mexican and paid him to look after their horses for two days.  “Why don’t you get electricity put in?” Atkins asked him.  “You’re like to burn the whole town down with that lantern sitting there.”

The Mexican shook his head, his eyes narrowing.  “No, sir.  I don’t trust those lights.  The wires hum like bees.”

“You rather burn up?”

“
Sí
.  Fire, at least, I know.”

Hayes nodded. 

“You might be right.  Say, can you point us toward some grub?”

The Mexican pointed to the east.  Hayes thanked him, shouldered his heavy saddlebags, and headed out the livery’s entrance, turning left onto the street.  Atkins gathered his own bags and followed behind. 

“Shouldn’t we visit the sheriff first?”

“Naw,” Hayes said, eyeing the storefronts.  “Sheriff’s in bed still.  Deputies, too, most likely.  Might as well get settled.”

Most of the stores were dark and locked.  They stopped under a sign that read

City Restaurant

MEALS AT ALL HOURS

and went into the narrow one-story building beneath it.  The room inside was lit by a single light bulb and filled with a half-dozen tables that looked more like school desks.  A bald, red-eyed man was sitting at one of the tables, reading the paper and smoking a cigar.  He was dressed in a cook’s apron turned brown from use.

“Ten cents for breakfast.”

Hayes crossed the room, dropped his saddlebags beside a table, and sat down with his back to the wall.

“We’ll have two.”

“Biscuits and sausage?”

“Sounds fine.”

The bald cook grunted and stood up, leaving his paper on the table as he went into the kitchen.  Atkins felt no interest in the paper’s headlines—nothing could equal what they’d come from.  Nothing at all.

“Have a chair, Milo.”

Atkins adjusted the saddlebag’s strap on his shoulder.  “I ain’t hungry.  We should go to the law.”

“I told you already.  The law’s sleeping.”

“They won’t believe us.”  

“No, they likely won’t.  Not until somebody checks on Red Earth and reports back.  Till then, we’ll hunt our friend as we please.”

Iron clattered in the back room and the cook swore loudly in Polish.  Atkins stared at the chair Hayes had pushed out for him, frowning.  He felt his wires humming, humming like angry bees.

“How can you be so sure he’s in town?  He might have headed straight for Cheyenne or Denver.  They’re on the rail line, too.  And they’re bigger.  He’ll be able to hide like a pebble in a stream.”

Hayes laced his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair.  “He doesn’t want to hide, Milo.  You said it yourself—he wants everybody to know about him and be a-feared.  Rawlins is a good size for that.  Enough folks for a proper massacre, but still on the rails when he feels like making a getaway.  He looks like anybody now.  He can hide right in the middle of the street.”

The saddle bag’s strap had started to cut into Atkins’ shoulder, turning it numb.  He sighed and let it drop to the floor.

“Damn it all, Hayes.”

The older man nodded.  “That’s right.  Damn it all.”

The cook swore again in the kitchen, but the rich smell of sausage gravy was already leaking out through the doorway, promising heat and a packed stomach.

After breakfast they went a block over and checked into a hotel, where they deposited their bags and took advantage of the wash basin in each of their rooms, scrubbing off as much of the road as they could.  The clock in the hotel’s lobby read eight when they stepped back out into the wide street, which had filled with pedestrians mulling about in the early morning sunshine, visiting the bakeries, the short orders, the druggists, the tailors, the attorneys, the dry goods, the liquors, the meat markets, the dentists, the insurance agents, the goddamn Masonic hall.  After two years sequestered in Red Earth, Atkins felt irritable and enclosed in such dawdling traffic and scowled at anybody who looked his way.  His hands kept clenching, too, like they wanted to tear into something.  The children bothered him especially, the boys and girls laughing and chasing after each other like curs set loose.  Their smiling, bonneted mothers and indulgent, fat-chinned fathers, letting them rush about as they pleased.

By the time they got to the jailhouse, Atkins was ready to tear right out of his skin, set it on fire, and hurl it at the world.  Hayes turned around at the door, as if he sensed the younger man’s eyes burning through his back.

“You feeling well, son?  You look a touch rabid.”

“I’m dandy, Elwood.  Let’s get this over.”

Hayes paused, studying him.

“You know, I’ve seen that sort of look before.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  That’s how a National man looked at me right before I shot his knee and killed three of his pals.”

Atkins dropped his gaze and turned his head, pretending he was looking at something down the street. 

“Should I take that revolver of yours before we go in?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’d give it back soon as we’re finished.”

Atkins looked up.  “Goddamn.  I said I’m fine, Hayes.”

“Sure, no need to get hot about it.  One more thing, though.  Don’t call me Hayes.  I don’t want anybody knowing my name around here.  The law and I aren’t too friendly with each other.”

Atkins snorted and spat on the ground. 

“Somehow, that don’t surprise me much.”

Hayes opened the jailhouse door and gestured for Atkins to go through first.  Atkins touched his hat brim in mock thanks and went into the brick building.  He found himself in a large room that smelled like cigar smoke and coffee and had three cells at the back.  To his left was a table where two men sat playing crib, to his right a large oak executive desk behind which a portly, gray bearded man sat smoking and reading a paper.  All three looked up as they entered, studying them.  “Morning,” Atkins said, removing his hat and stepping toward the gray bearded man.  “Are you the sheriff?”

“Far as I know,” he said, smiling as he laid down his paper and offered his hand.  “Jeremiah Taylor.” 

Atkins shook his hand. 

“Milo Atkins, sir, and that fella there is Mr. Elwood Smith.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Sheriff Taylor said, nodding to Hayes.  “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

Atkins took a breath and pressed his hat against his chest, wondering how best to explain it.

“We’re just in from Red Earth.  Actually, I’m the camp’s sheriff.”

“That so?”  Taylor leaned back in his chair, resting his hands on his round gut.  “How’s that mine coming?  Still yielding high grade, I hope.  Y’all only been on it for what, two years?”

“That’s why we’re here, actually.  They had a problem in the mine.”

Taylor frowned and twiddled his thumbs.

“Collapse?”

“Worse than that.  They found something in the mine that started killing the men and they couldn’t stop it.”

Taylor looked from Atkins to Hayes to the deputies across the room.

“You mean like poison gas?  Like a coal damp?”

“More like a demon, or a devil, like.  He tore through the miners then came up to the surface.  We tried collapsing the mine, but he just tunneled out.  Every man he killed seemed to make him stronger.  I called a town meeting, but he showed up there, too, and killed about anything that moved, including women and children.  By the morning, he’d killed near everybody in town.”

Atkins paused, giving the news time to sink in.  The sheriff’s face had frozen at the word “devil” and remained that way.

“Elwood and I are the last folks still breathing air.  We came to Rawlins to warn you he might be coming here, or already is here.  He looks like any man, really, though he walks stiff, like there’s a rod run through his back.”

“A rod run through his back?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

Taylor licked his lips and a twinkle came into his eyes.  His face broke into a broad smile as he sat forward again in his chair, setting his plump hands onto the table.

“Doc Osborne put you up to this, didn’t he?”

Taylor started wheezing until the wheezing changed to laughter. 

“That old son-of-a-bitch.  First he turns Big Nose George into a pair of shoes, now he’s trying to fool me.”

The deputies guffawed at their table.  “He’s trying to get your goat,” one of them said, fanning himself with his cards.  “Thinks you’re plumb simple, J. T.”

Taylor crossed his arms across his chest, his laughter turned to chuckling.

“If that don’t beat all, fellas.  A demon killing a whole camp.”

Hayes pushed his hat up his forehead and looked around the room, letting his glance linger on each man.  His eyes had gone flat and hard, like a hawk’s, and he didn’t speak till the others had gone silent again.

“I don’t know who Doc Osborne is, but this is no jest.  Sheriff Atkins is telling the God’s honest.  My brother was one of the killed.  So was Atkins’ wife and son.”

Sheriff Taylor’s grin faded, though his eyes still had that twinkle.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Smith.”

“Sorry’s got nothing to do with it.  We came to warn you.  How you take it is your concern.”

“That’s right,” Sheriff Taylor said, nodding.  “So, saying this all happened there in Red Earth, what would you like me to do about it?  Send a crew of gravediggers into the mountains to bury the whole town?”

“You needn’t do that,” Atkins said, his hands curling back into fists.  “The miners are sealed below ground and we burned the townsfolk in a pile.”

“That must have been a sight.”

“It was,” Hayes said.  “Won’t be nothing compared to all the folks in Rawlins heaped together, if he decides to set loose here.  You tell your deputies to keep their eyes open for strangers acting peculiar.”

“Like the two of you, you mean,” the other deputy said.  “I’d have to say you two boys sound about as peculiar as it gets.”

Atkins forced his fingers to uncurl and set his hat back on his head.  “We’ll be staying in town for a few days if you need us.  He favors a straight razor, though he’s strong enough to rip a body apart if he’s inclined.”

Hayes and Atkins headed for the door, but Atkins paused before crossing through the doorway. 

“I don’t know how many deputies you got, but you’ll want to see to adding as many more as can shoot a gun.”

Taylor smiled and sat back in his chair.

“Thank you, Sheriff Atkins.  I’ll take your idea into consideration.”

Atkins nodded and stepped out.  As the door swung shut behind him, he heard the deputies inside bust into laughter, braying like a couple of asses.

“I thought as much,” Atkins said to Hayes, who’d hooked his thumbs through his belt and was standing in the middle of the street, looking both ways.  “They figured us for a pair of loons.”

Hayes shrugged, studying the folks passing by.  “They’ve been warned, Milo.  We can’t do more.”

A man rode by on horseback, chased by a yipping terrier with a tatted left ear.  Two women, out window shopping in their fancy lace dresses, pointed at the yipping dog and giggled.

“He’ll sweep through this town like a brushfire, Elwood.”

The older man nodded.

“If he wants.”

Hayes wanted to wander the town some more to properly scout it, but Atkins was too worn out from riding through the night and begged off.  Atkins dragged himself back to the hotel and dropped onto his bed, removing only his gun belt and boots.  He could hear the traffic passing by in the street—the clopping of hooves, the shouts of children, the guttural laughter of men—but the noise came to him as from a great and clouded distance.  He drifted asleep but woke several times in the late morning and early afternoon, his room growing ever warmer, his pillow hot beneath his head. 

Finally, at dusk, Milo Atkins broke free of sleep’s groggy tendrils and rose kicking to the surface.  His blankets lay tangled around him, damp with his sweat. When he turned onto his side, yawning away the sleep, he expected to see his wife there, smiling back at him.

But she was not.

This was not Red Earth.

This was Rawlins, Wyoming, and no one he loved was here. 

Atkins turned onto his back and gazed up at the stamped tin ceiling.  More traffic passed below—early evening traffic.  Folks taking the air, couples heading to dinner.  When he and Violet had been courting, they’d loved watching the sun go down—they’d felt as if each setting was for them and them alone, as if Nature sensed the fierceness of their new love and wished to reflect it back upon them ten-fold.  He could still recall her cool hand in his.  The soft blue light after. 

Atkins rolled off the lumpy hotel bed and onto his feet.  He put on his boots and his gun belt and splashed water on his face from the wash basin.  He could hear voices murmuring through the walls of his room—the hotel had filled up while he’d been sleeping.  They’d come into town on the daily train, he supposed.  The depot was only a few blocks away, along Front Street.  The newcomers would have proper, stiff-sided luggage, traveling clothes, and purpose.  You didn’t come to this part of the country without a good reason.

Atkins exited his room, went down the hotel stairs, and stepped out onto the street.  The evening sky had turned the dark purple of a bruised plum.  Atkins entered a saloon beside their hotel and found it packed with folks eating and drinking at small tables, with more men sitting elbow-to-elbow up at the long counter.  Elwood Hayes was sitting at the far end of the counter and staring into his beer.  He looked like he’d had a bath and the cut on his face was freshly bandaged.  Atkins felt an urge to go over and join him, but then he remembered they weren’t exactly drinking buddies.  Barely associates, really, with the only thing shared between them the horror of the last few days, the Charred Man and the wickedness he had wrought.  What would they talk about except death?  What else was there to talk about anymore?