Avenging Angel (23 page)

Dust swirling around them, they pulled to a stop in front of the house. Tice killed the motor and they sat in the Jeep, the radio giving a muted hiss, waiting. The sheriff was right about the dogs; no frantic barking, no nervous bleats from the penned goats broke the silence. Only the soft chatter of cottonwood leaves blending with the rush of the shallow river.

“How long does it take from Six Mile Spring to where they leave the horses?”

“Couple hours. But it’s a long country mile from Jones Bend, and the boys can’t walk too damn fast in cowboy boots. A lot of it’s across slickrock, too.”

It took another half hour; the blue jay jabbered occasionally, and once they heard the distant, rusty croak of a crow gliding the updrafts above the cliffs. But no voices came from the house or the trees surrounding it.

Zenas could see them, Wager knew. But the man was not going to show himself in the open. He would wait, like last time, until they were close enough to be called quietly into the shelter of the bushes. And that would take as long as Hodges and Yates needed to sneak into hiding nearby.

Tice’s thick fingers drummed restlessly on the steering wheel. Gradually, the shadow of the stone house moved toward the Jeep’s square bumper, touched the dusty knobbed tire, rose an inch or so up its bulging, dusty flank.

When the signal came, it was sharp and strong, three clicks like river stones popped together, a short silence, then three more clicks. Tice thumbed his receiver twice in reply and then heaved out of the driver’s seat. “Let’s find Zenas.”

The two men stood briefly, eyes searching the cliffs, ears listening through the liquid sound of the cottonwoods. Out of courtesy, they knocked at the door of the house they knew to be empty. Then Wager led Tice around the side toward the barn. “He was waiting in those willows last time.”

He was again, his soft voice greeting them when they were halfway across the barnyard. “If you come in peace come this way.”

“I don’t know how much peace we bring,” said Tice. “But we got to talk.”

They pushed through the tangled screen of willow branches. Zenas, rifle ready, kneeled to peer past the two until they were totally hidden. Then he gestured at them to sit down. “What is it this time?”

“It’s nice to see you, too, Zenas.” Tice crouched heavily on one knee and panted against the bind of his cartridge belt. “We got word this morning that Beauchamp’s come north with about fifteen armed men. We figure they’re looking for you and the Kruses.”

Zenas’s hand stroked lightly down his beard. “Fifteen. That’s a lot. He comes looking for blood atonement then.”

Wager raised his eyebrows.

Tice explained, “That’s where you wash away a man’s sins with his own blood. It’s a lot more convenient than using your own.”

Zenas’s dark eyes widened slightly with anger. “You may mock, Tice, but a man’s flesh is only temporal. His soul is eternal. Eternal!”

The sheriff grunted. “Let the good Lord look after the souls. My job’s to look after the flesh. And that’s what I’m here to do, Zenas, like it or not. I want to get me some destroying angels.”

“They are not Danites—they don’t labor with the blessing of the Lord. They are apostate!”

“They sure don’t labor with the blessing of the law. That’s why we’re here.”

“With the help of the Lord, we will look after our own. We don’t need you.”

“You need every gun you can get and you know it.”

The bearded man could not bring himself to agree, but his silence marked the truth of what Tice said.

“Counting me and Detective Wager, we got ten rifles. Eight of them are already in place.”

“I know,” said Zenas, a glint of cold humor in his eyes. “My son watched them come in from Jones Bend. You gave him a good scare.”

Tice poked at the soft dirt with a twig. “I figured you got all the trails watched. You’ve seen nothing of Willis then?”

Zenas shook his head.

“He’s coming. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow or the next day. But he’s coming. You believe me, don’t you?”

“Even so.”

“I’d like to set a trap for him.”

Interest rippled behind the blank expression Zenas wore for Gentiles.

“I’d like you to put your family back in the house so we can draw them in. Then we can get them before they scatter.”

“No.”

Tice poked again. “If we get them they’ll be out of your hair. If we don’t they’ll be back. How long you think they’ll take to find where you’ve got your people hid?”

“I’ll not sacrifice one of my family.”

“Nobody’s talking sacrifice, Zenas. We’ll have people inside the house and outside. And when Willis comes in we’ll close on him fast. He won’t be expecting as many guns as he’ll find.”

“He will plan for the worst and hope for the best, and he has all the guile and craft of the Antichrist. If you fail then he has my family. I will not bring them into that danger.”

“Well, I can’t deny there’ll be some danger.” Tice scratched his ear. “God alone knows what can go wrong. But if it works and we do get him we can put him away for a long time. Him and all the people with him.”

“My family is a sacred trust. It is our duty to God to work his will on earth. No one else—Gentile, infidel, Antichrist—no one else has been chosen for this duty and this joy.” The words came out like pebbles tossed on the ground between them. “If I bring harm on those who are God’s true laborers then my soul will wander unregenerate and so will theirs. What you want, Tice, is that I risk not only their lives but their eternal bliss in the highest heaven. I won’t do it.”

Wager spoke for the first time, trying to keep exasperation from his voice. “Maybe it’s God’s will we’re here,” he said. “I don’t know. I don’t think you do either. But we both know what that man wants to do, and it won’t be just your family that’s in danger; it’ll be the rest of the people in your church, too. If Beauchamp’s not caught, none of you are safe. Look.” Wager pointed through the thick tangle at the house. “He outnumbers us. But if we can pen them in a small area and catch them by surprise we’ve got a chance, and a good one. The way to do that is to make the ranch seem normal so they will move in close. God, or somebody, has given you this chance to get Willis. You ask your people—see if some of them are willing to take the risk. If they are it won’t all be on your soul if something happens.”

Zenas’s eyes narrowed with thought. “Despise not wisdom though it be from the serpent himself.”

Wager wasn’t sure if he liked that serpent bit, but he saw that the man was weighing the argument. He and Tice waited; the only sounds were the rustling leaves and the occasional zing of a hurrying insect.

“I will ask my sons.”

“It’s got to look real,” said Wager again. “It’s got to look natural enough to fool Beauchamp into coming in close.”

Zenas added grudgingly, “And my women. But you two will have to be in there, too.”

It was nearing sunset by the time Tice had briefed his men, warning them repeatedly against smoking and unnecessary talk or movement. “We want as many of them in as possible before we make our move. We don’t want to scare them off. If it works you hold your fire until I call you in—everybody got that?”

Silent nods from the men seated or sprawled on the cooling sand of the small, deep crevice that served as an assembly area.

“Don’t move up to your positions until just at dark. And then, by God, you set still and keep quiet. If it don’t happen tonight pull back to this assembly area as soon as you can see your fingers in front of your face.”

“How long you think this’ll take, Sheriff?” asked the nasal voice.

Tice shrugged. “It can’t be too long—Willis won’t want to stay in the States too long. Two, three days at most, I’d say. Why, you in a hurry to get someplace?”

“He’s in a hurry to get his pecker dipped before somebody else gets there.”

“You be go to hell,” said Nasal. “If you could even get yours up you’d maybe know something about it!”

“That’s enough,” said Tice. “Now I don’t want any horseplay from you people. This here’s damn serious, and we got a lot of lives we’re responsible for—women and children. You hear me?”

The nasal voice mumbled a “Well, he started it. …”

“Now, Wager and me are going to drive out like we’re leaving. When it gets dark, we’ll double back and set up in the house. Remember, if they come tonight don’t anybody spook them—let them take the bait good, you hear me? We’ll raise enough hell so they think they got the whole bunch trapped and bring up everybody. Then—and only then—you people make your move. I’ll radio for you.” Tice paused to give emphasis: “We only have one chance. I don’t want nobody screwing it up. Earl, you and Roy got any questions? Anybody else?”

There were none. Tice and Wager shared cold camp with the group and then picked their roundabout way back through a series of cracks and fissures between the cooling and gigantic rocks toward the farmhouse. As they approached the shelter of the trees, they heard wood being chopped and the loud rattle of cooking pans carried on the breeze.

“Well, I guess you talked him into it,” said Tice. “You old serpent.”

Zenas had brought only three of his family: his first wife, Miriam, and two boys between ten and twelve years old. Those two watched the approaching strangers with large, solemn eyes; their shotguns, almost as tall as they were, leaned handily inside the kitchen door. Miriam, her graying hair in a tight bun at the back of her neck, avoided glancing at either Gentile; but her worry trailed behind her like an odor as she strode through the kitchen and downstairs rooms, lighting the fire in the stove as the afternoon cooled into evening, carrying oil lamps from window to window, attending to all the business of getting a large farm family ready for supper. And sharply bossing the two boys, as if she did not think they should be there.

Zenas led them silently through the house and out the front door toward their Jeep. He stood casually in the softening light, a clear target for any sniper who might be working toward them from one of the surrounding cliffs. “When you come back, come up the back way past the outhouse. I’ll have the dogs penned up, but don’t try to come in until you get an answer to your signal.”

“All right,” said Tice. “Be about an hour, hour and a half.”

“I’ll be here,” he said laconically, and without another word turned back to the house, whose windows glowed more brightly in the dusk that rose from the canyon floor.

“Did he tell you where his family’s hidden?” Wager asked.

“No. But I can guess.” Tice steered over a rough ledge of rock lifting like a spine across the dirt road. “There’s three or four big canyons downriver a couple miles. My guess is he’s got them scattered out there.” He added, “That’s probably Willis’s guess, too, if this little trick don’t fool him. I hope to God this trick works.”

“Those two kids,” said Wager, “they make it look real. But they sure are young.”

“They can pull a trigger if they have to. Things work out, they won’t have to.”

Wager looked over his shoulder at the ranch below, a cluster of pale lights in the dark bank of trees. A plume of smoke rose from the chimney against the clear green of the desert evening. The wind had hesitated again and the smoke stood like a ghostly flagpole against the sky. “Did he leave his oldest sons on guard there?”

“Yes. And I didn’t try to talk him out of that. If they hear shooting up here most of them are supposed to move upriver and close off the west side. If the shooting starts down there we run like sonsafbitches and try to save whoever we can.”

“How far away is it?”

“About a half hour if you walk.”

A lot of people could be killed in a half hour. “How many guns does he have down there?”

“Six.”

So if Willis didn’t split his people he would outnumber either group of defenders. “It’s got to work,” said Wager.

“Yep,” said Tice.

Gradually, the headlights became stronger, picking out boulders tumbled at the roadside and then gliding past them to fall away into the dark above the sandy track. The main road swung into the headlights, leading uphill as the Jeep ground and lurched through the sand. To the south a faint orange glow stuttered a moment, then turned black again as a thunderstorm built up over the mountains a hundred miles distant. A minute or two later another flicker, silent as distant artillery, answered from a different corner of the horizon.

“Late moon tonight. Won’t be up before twelve, one o’clock.”

In Vietnam, when the patrols had rotated around to his platoon, Sergeant Wager had felt this same sense of suspension, as if he were cut off from both past and future. That’s how it had been when everything was ready and there was nothing to do except wait: a feeling like the one he had now—separate, tightly held, curiously relaxed.

“I reckon this is far enough.” Tice flipped off the lights and drove a hundred or so more yards down the gray track before turning from the road. “We can hide the Jeep in this ravine. It’ll be pretty much out of sight come light.”

“Fine.”

The desert air, cooling quickly, was especially sharp after the searing heat of the day. Wager pulled on the dark brown uniform jacket he had been loaned and snapped the cuffs. Without wasting words, the two men took their rifles out of the Jeep and began to trudge back down the road into the black reaches of the canyon.

T
HEY HEARD THE
music before the farmhouse lights winked through the notch. Following the calm of the long, green twilight, the awakened breeze’s restless shiftings carried the thin wail of a fiddle first from one corner of the rocky canyon, then from another.

“That noise doesn’t soothe any savage beast I know of,” murmured Wager.

Tice grunted. “Mormons like their music. Zenas is probably doing what they do every night—having some music, praying, and then going to bed.”

“Beats watching television.”

“It does that. Especially if you don’t have electricity.”

Tice led away from the road and along a trail of dirt that glimmered between dark sandstone blocks tumbled from the cliffs above. They gradually worked their way into the shelter of the black trees bordering the river and then toward the rear of the farmhouse. By the time they drew near, the music had stopped. One by one, the glowing windows darkened until only the back of the house showed any lights. Pausing a stone’s throw away, the sheriff folded his hands into a hollow fist and blew softly on his bent thumbs; the furry whistle, like the call of an owl, echoed through the rustling leaves around them.