Man From Boot Hill (9 page)

As he rode away, Nick fell into thought. So far, he had been concerned more with what Joseph ultimately intended on doing rather than what how the rancher would actually do it. Nick was all too used to simply throwing his things into a bag and riding away. Most folks weren’t so transient, however, and in Joseph’s case, the man didn’t have much more than the clothes on his back. No matter how distraught he was, Joseph would know he’d need more than that if he was to ride off after anyone.

That meant returning to his ranch.

Nick touched his heels to Kazys’s sides, which got the horse moving at a full gallop. The dark stallion might have been old, but years of pulling a wagon had made him hunger for the thrill of tearing over a trail without anything dragging behind him. Kazys was gasping for breath by the time he arrived at the Van Meter ranch, but didn’t let up until Nick pulled back on the reins.

As soon as he saw Rasa tethered to a splintered
hitching post, Nick knew he’d gone to the right spot. He tied Kazys next to the other horse, patted both animals on their noses and started walking toward the ruins of the main house. Before he could get within five paces of the front door, Nick saw someone moving inside. The figure stopped just short of the doorway, with both arms filled to brimming with scavenged items.

“Nick?” came Joseph’s voice from inside the house. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me. If you wanted to collect some of your things, you should have mentioned it. I would have let you borrow my wagon.”

“You’ve done plenty,” Joseph said as he emerged from the house.

Nick looked at the items Joseph was carrying. There were a few articles of clothing, which were used more for wrapping up a shotgun than anything else. Its barrel poked out of an old shirt.

“What’ve you got there?” Nick asked.

“Just some things I’ll be needing. Sorry about taking your horse, but I figured on returning her as soon as I rounded up one of my own. There’s got to be a few still wandering around here. If not, I’ll have to buy one.”

“What about Sam? Were you just going to leave him?”

“Catherine has been doing a fine job of taking care of the boy. Better than I could manage for now. I told him to go to his uncle’s if you two looked like you had your hands full.”

“Isn’t that a big decision to put on a boy’s head?” Nick asked.

Joseph squinted as if contemplating that was giving him a headache. Finally he waved off the question and muttered, “I can’t think about that right now. He’s taken care of himself before and he knows how to get to his uncle’s just fine.”

“You’re not thinking straight, Joseph.”

Joseph was quiet for a few moments, but when he looked at Nick, there was the glimmer of a smirk on his face. “Catherine sent you out here, didn’t she?”

“Not at all. She’s concerned, but I’m the one that’s got a better notion of how you’re feeling right now.”

“Have you seen your family slaughtered in front of you?”

Before he could prepare himself for their arrival, the ghosts swarmed back into his head, filling it with visions of lynch mobs and friends dangling from nooses. He could smell the potent mix of burned gunpowder and freshly spilled blood. Echoes of screams rolled behind his ears.

“I’ve seen plenty,” Nick said. “Maybe not the same things as you, but more than enough to know what it’s like when all you can think about is paying someone back for the wrongs they did to you.”

“So what?” Joseph grumbled. “Are you going to try and tell me how I should just forget about everything that happened, take Sam to another place and try to be happy?”

That was more or less what Nick was going to say. Unfortunately, he didn’t know exactly what to tell Joseph next. As he took a moment to think of something, Nick realized that there wasn’t much of anything he could say to make the man feel any better. The wounds were too fresh. Many of Nick’s own wounds were several years old, and they still caused him no end of pain.

“What if I can help you?” Nick finally asked.

Joseph studied him carefully, as if he was waiting for the second boot to drop. “If you want to bury those murdering bastards when I’m done with them, you’re welcome to it. Otherwise, I don’t see how you’d be much help.”

“You plan on hunting that gang down by yourself? There’s at least a couple dozen of them. By now, they might have already replenished the ones they lost the night they took your ranch.”

Joseph shifted on his feet and gazed around as if he was seeing it all for the first time. There were burned-out shells where there had once been buildings. Scorched dirt covered spots where his children used to play. Dried blood stained the ground where his wife and daughter had made their last stand.

Watching him take in the sight of it all, Nick swore he could hear the other man’s ghosts settling in and making themselves at home.

“I’ve got to do this,” Joseph said. “I won’t be able to look at myself in the mirror again if I don’t. Already, I can barely stand to see Sam smile at me.
He looks at me like I’m something special, and I couldn’t even keep his mother and sister alive.”

“He’ll always look at you like that. I’m sure he’d rather see you sad for a while than dead.”

Joseph pondered that, but his eyes were drawn back to the ranch. “I’ve been standing here for a while. I thought I’d collect what I needed and get moving, but then I realized I hadn’t been back here since everything happened.”

“I thought about taking you here when you mentioned it the first few times, but that was only a day or so after you were hurt. You may not even recall saying anything.”

“I don’t.”

“It may have been better for you to not come back here at all.”

“Why’s that?” Joseph asked with a hint of venom in his tone. “So I would forget?”

“You’ll never forget. That night will be like a scar, but it don’t mean there’s a reason to tear it open on purpose.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I would have pegged you as a preacher rather than a gravedigger.”

“This is something I know about. Things would have been a lot different if someone had tried to talk some sense into me when I was at the start of taking on more than I could handle.”

“Yeah, but would you have listened to them?”

Joseph’s question hung in the air. After enough time had passed, Joseph nodded and started walking to the house. “I need to get one more thing.
That is, if it’s still there. Whatever I decide on doing, I’ll need it.”

Nick followed Joseph into the ranch house. The place looked even worse on the inside than it did on the outside. Walls were charred black and nothing was in its proper place. The stench of smoke was thick in the air and Joseph kept his hand over his mouth to keep from breathing too much of it in.

After stepping into a large room toward the back of the house and across from the kitchen, Joseph lowered himself to one knee and placed both hands upon the cracked floor. His head hung low and his fingertips pressed between two chipped boards as if he meant to pull it up.

Recognizing that posture from folks mourning at a fresh grave, Nick took a few steps back and left him to his grief. Then Joseph straightened his back and lifted the two planks from the floor. They came up halfway before catching on one of the shattered boards next to them. After a few more pulls, however, the boards came free and Joseph tossed them aside.

Nick stepped forward and craned his neck to look over Joseph’s shoulder. “What’s that?”

A gunshot blasted through the room, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass. Joseph dropped to the floor and rolled away from the rectangular hole he’d uncovered. Nick flipped his coat open so he could draw his pistol. Both men looked in the direction of the shot and found a skinny man leaning out from behind a cabinet that
had been propped in a corner. The man’s face was as filthy as the rest of the room, and his wild eyes stared from behind the filth like it was a mask. Ashes and splinters were tangled in his hair. He peeked through one of the cabinet’s doors, which dangled open on one set of hinges. The gun in his hand was still smoking. “Dutch knew there’d be more!” he shouted.

Nick closed his hand around the nub of his pistol grip and brought the weapon up. The grooved contours of the gun’s barrel fit within the matching ridges inside his holster to shift the pistol into the palm of Nick’s hand, compensating for his missing fingers. Although he drew the weapon fairly smoothly and quicker than a man in his condition should have, he wasn’t fast enough to fire a shot before the gunman behind the cabinet took another of his own.

Firing several times in quick succession, the gunman squirmed out from behind the cabinet until he was able to pull free of it. He flinched as a few shots from Nick’s pistol chipped away at the wooden frame in front of him, but managed to get in a lucky shot that was close enough to move Nick back a distance.

“Get away from that money!” the gunman shouted.

Just as Nick settled his aim, he saw the gunman lower his empty pistol and make a hasty grab for another one wedged under his belt.

“Dutch said you’d be back to collect the rest of
that money, and he sure as hell was right!”

Nick pulled his trigger and blasted a hole through the gunman’s hip. He started moving toward the gunman, but had to stop as the other man’s empty pistol was thrown directly at him.

Despite the blood flowing from his hip, the gunman staggered forward and fired a shot in Joseph’s direction. He snarled through gritted teeth, but couldn’t manage to form any words.

After the empty gun bounced off his forearm, Nick stepped forward and fired another shot at the gunman. He was aiming for the man’s other leg but took too much time in doing it. As he was pulling his trigger, he saw the gunman twist around to fire two quick shots at him.

One bullet blazed past Nick’s torso and the other clipped a bit of flesh from under his arm. Being hit in such an awkward spot threw Nick off balance as pain coursed through his shoulder. Even so, he kept his wits about him and took the shot he’d been lining up.

“Son of a bitch!” the gunman moaned as his legs crumpled beneath him and he dropped like a sack of rocks.

Nick walked over to him and stepped on the gunman’s wrist, pinning his weapon to the floor. Staring down at him over the barrel of his modified Schofield, he asked, “How long you been waiting there?”

“I been here for days,” the gunman wheezed. “You…didn’t even see me.”

Reaching into the hole in the floor, Joseph pulled out a small strongbox and held it out. “Is this what you were after?”

The gunman’s jaw clenched as he eyed the strongbox. The sight of it made his legs squirm and his arm struggle beneath Nick’s boot. “We knew you had a bunch of cash stored. Plenty more than what we found. George told us it was in this room. We just couldn’t find where you squirreled it away.”

“Now you know,” Joseph said.

“So you just waited here until someone came back?” Nick asked.

The gunman nodded. “Dutch said you’d be back. He said any man would want to check on that much money on the chance that it survived the fire. Looks like he was right.” Sucking in a series of quick breaths, the gunman shifted his eyes to Nick and said, “You let me go and I can tell Dutch the money burned up.”

“I suppose you’d expect a percentage of what’s in that box in return for that kind of service, huh?” Nick asked.

“That’d only be fair.”

“Tell me where Dutch is headed,” Nick offered. “Then we’ll see about payment.”

“They’re splitting up. Some are rounding up some more boys and the rest are taking the Silver Gorge trail.”

“I’ve never even heard of the Silver Gorge trail. You’re making it up. And where will they be look
ing for men?” Joseph asked as he walked up to the gunman with the strongbox tucked under his arm.

The gunman’s eyes fixed upon the strongbox as he licked his lips expectantly. “One of the places is called San Trisha or something. There’s some other town along the way, but I can’t remember the name. I’ll tell you where they’re all meeting up once I get a taste of that money. After that, we can part company.”

Nick leaned down until his gun barrel was less than an inch from the gunman’s face. “You wouldn’t be lying to me, would you?”

“No, no! I swear.”

“Why the hell should we believe you?”

“Because it don’t matter if you know where they’re at or not. Dutch’s got everything covered against anything that can go wrong. He’s also got ten times more guns than you and anyone else you know put together. Besides, I was done with them after this job, anyways. I need all the money I can scrounge up.”

“You’re not afraid of Dutch finding out how we came by this information?”

The gunman winced and sweat poked out of his brow for the first time. “Why bother telling him? We’re working together, ain’t we? I don’t even expect much money in return. Just let me go and tack on…say…five hundred dollars and we’ll call it even.”

“How about you just fuck yourself instead?”

Joseph said as he raised the gun in his other hand and pulled the trigger.

The single shot sounded louder than the gunfire that had come before. It exploded inside the room and sent an icy chill through Nick’s body.

Joseph looked down the barrel of his gun as smoke curled out and drifted up. He focused on the gunman’s open, lifeless eye before shifting his gaze to the bloody hole where the man’s other eye had been. “That was one of the men who dragged my wife out of her room,” he said.

Nick holstered his gun and watched the man’s face. “He was also the man who could have told us where those killers meant to group up.”

Finally, Joseph let out the breath he’d been holding and lowered his gun. “I would have told him about this money,” he said more to himself than to Nick. “I was going to tell them about all of it, but I didn’t get the chance. Those sons of bitches didn’t give me the chance.”

Joseph didn’t say another word. Instead, he tucked his gun away and carried the strongbox outside.

Nick followed Joseph from the house and away from the surrounding buildings. There was a horse inside the remains of the stable, which Nick guessed had belonged to the gunman. Joseph emptied the saddlebags and filled them with things he’d collected from the house. After that, he climbed into the saddle and set the strongbox on his lap. Without looking the gift horse in the mouth, he snapped the reins and got moving.

A good portion of the grass and nearby field were burned as well, but the charred blackness spread out for less than a quarter mile before eventually giving way to the greens and browns of life. The ride was as quiet as a tomb. Nick kept a watchful eye on Joseph the entire time. All he saw from the other man was an occasional shake of his head as they moved slowly across his property.

They made it all the way to the fence line before Joseph stopped and turned around. “They’re gone,” he said as Nick came up alongside him. “All
of them are gone. The whole herd, the horses, even the goddamn hands who swore up and down they’d look after this place like it was their own.”

Looking over to Nick, he added, “I didn’t expect that kind of loyalty from all of them, but a few of them…”

“They were tricked,” Nick said. “Whoever this Dutch is, he got a few men working for him on the inside and they got the others into town at the right time.”

“How?”

“By saying they were having a party for you.” Nick let out a sigh and said, “I had a word with one of the members of that gang. One of them was in jail. He told me how the gang got it to work.”

“You…weren’t going to tell me?”

“What good would it have done?”

“I could have done something about it,” Joseph said without a trace of emotion in his voice.

“And I thought I could steer you away from this before more blood was spilled.”

“Too late for that.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “I guess so.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“I’m not going to say.”

Joseph’s eyes narrowed and his hand drifted to his gun. Before he could think twice about it, the pistol was in his hand and being brought up to aim at Nick.

To Nick, the movement seemed slower than molasses in the summertime. Oddly enough, when he
found himself staring down the barrel, he wasn’t completely surprised.

“Tell me what was said,” Joseph demanded.

Nick didn’t twitch.

He didn’t blink.

And he didn’t make a sound no matter how vehemently Joseph demanded.

Finally, Joseph blinked and lowered his gun as if he was just now waking up. “Sorry. I…don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I do. That’s why I came to try and talk some sense into you.”

“I just don’t know how I could change my mind. Not after I…”

Nick let that sentence drift off without being finished. He knew what Joseph meant to say, just as he knew all too well how hard the first kill was. For some, it was like making love to a woman the first time and got easier and better with practice. For others, it was like breaking through a rock wall. After that, the thought of breaking through another didn’t seem as bad.

With all the thinking he’d done on the subject, Nick couldn’t decide if either one was truly worse than the other. Both roads led to the same spot. Despite everything Nick had said and done to avoid it, they were standing in that spot right now.

“They’re riding into New Mexico,” Nick said.

Joseph looked over to him and blinked. “What about the Silver Gorge trail?”

Nick didn’t meet the man’s stare, but looked out onto the stretch of barren land in front of him. “It’s an old route used by smugglers and bandits. It’s a hard ride over some rough country, but it’s fast and not a lot of lawmen know about it. At least, not the sort of lawmen that we should be concerned about.”

“We?”

Nodding, Nick said, “I’m coming with you.”

“Why would you do something like that?”

“Because you have no idea what kind of hell you’re riding into. Since you’re not about to change your mind on going, I figure the least I can do is go along to see that you don’t get killed.”

“That still doesn’t tell me why.”

Shifting in his saddle, Nick looked toward Joseph, but not directly at him. “You can change your mind and decide to go home at any time up to a certain point. With me along, you stand a better chance of getting home before crossing that line.”

Joseph chuckled to himself. It was a tired sound that ended with him seeming to have lost all his breath. “You don’t think the line’s already been crossed?”

Nick’s eyes subtly shifted in their sockets. “Like I said, you don’t have the first notion of what kind of hell is in front of you.”

Joseph reflected on Nick’s words for the first time since they’d left the graveyard. Despite that brief glimmer of hope, Nick quickly realized that it wasn’t going to last long.

“I have to go after those bastards,” Joseph said. “Anything less would disgrace the memory of my Anne and Laurie.”

“What about your Sam?”

“This is for him, too.”

“All right, then. If you want to ride into a meat grinder, than you’ll be leading me there, too.”

“I’m not asking you to come,” Joseph told him. “So don’t try to appeal to my sense of guilt. Where this matter is concerned, I don’t have any guilt left in me.” With that, he put his ranch behind him and snapped the reins.

After riding a few paces, Joseph stopped and turned back around.

Nick was surprised to see the sudden bout of remorse in the man’s face. He was even more surprised to see the gun in his hand.

“I have a feeling you could outdraw me,” Joseph said. “But I should be able to pull my trigger before you make a move.”

“What the hell is this about?” Nick asked.

“You don’t want to come along with me, but you don’t think you have a choice. I appreciate the trouble, Nick, but I’ll take this choice out of your hands. Whatever you think you’ve seen or done, it doesn’t hold a candle to what happened to my family. Go take care of Sam for me until I get back. If I don’t come back, at least he’ll know his father died trying to set things straight.”

Nick let out a discouraged breath and shook his head. The muscles in his arm were twitching to
draw his gun, but he kept his arm still.

“Toss the gun and get off that horse,” Joseph demanded.

Holding his gun in a loose grip, Nick tossed it a couple yards away. He then climbed down from his saddle and stood next to Kazys.

“Sorry, Nick, but I need to do this.” With that, Joseph sighted along the top of his barrel and pulled his trigger.

The gun in Joseph’s hand barked. Joseph’s horse hopped off his front legs at the sound and shifted nervously from one hoof to another as Joseph struggled to keep control. Even as the bullet kicked up a mound of dirt a few inches from where Kazys was standing, that horse didn’t even flinch.

Nick had yet to change his expression.

Scowling, Joseph thumbed back the hammer and aimed again. Because his horse was still fretting beneath him, he couldn’t level his arm before Nick could collect his Schofield and walk right up to him.

Nick stopped a few inches shy of butting into Joseph’s barrel. “You know what the problem is?”

Joseph cursed under his breath while calming his horse and trying to steady his pistol.

Nick’s hand flashed up and around in a quick arc. The back of his left hand smacked against the side of Joseph’s gun, knocking it to one side. The gun went off as Joseph’s finger awkwardly hit the trigger, propelling its second round into the ground well away from the two men and their horses.

Even though his eyes didn’t leave Nick, Joseph didn’t see him raise his modified Schofield until it was pointed directly at his face.

“The problem,” Nick said calmly, “is that my horse has seen more gunfights than you have.”

Looking over toward Kazys, Joseph saw the animal calmly nibbling at a patch of grass while his own horse was still shaking its head and wriggling nervously.

“You’re a good man,” Nick said. “I know you’ve been through a lot. I’d like to help you. But don’t ever point a gun at me again. You understand?”

“I just wanted to spook your horse so—”

“Do…you…under…stand?”

Feeling like a kid that was being scolded after breaking a window, Joseph swallowed his pride and nodded.

“Good,” Nick replied as he holstered his gun. “What you’re feeling right now is the sting of being outclassed in a fight. Consider yourself lucky because, for most men, it’s the last thing they feel before getting their brains blown out the back of their skull. The men you want to hunt down will kill you without blinking, and they’ll take pleasure in doing it.”

“I know that,” Joseph said coldly.

“If I know you like I think I do, you’re also feeling a cold knot in the bottom of your stomach after shooting that man back at your house. That knot’s gonna be there forever.” Nick nodded sol
emnly. “I went through all this trouble to try and spare you them demons, but it’s too late now. The demons will come, and the more you kill, the louder their voices will get.

“But that’s not the only thing you started here by firing that shot. Whoever this Dutch is, he’ll know the man you killed is missing. Some of those others may have been replaceable, but that man was meant to bring back the strongbox you’re carrying, which means he’s got a whole gang anxiously awaiting his return. When he doesn’t come home, that whole gang will have one hell of a burr under their saddle.”

Joseph paused to let that sink in. After pulling in a breath, he lifted his gun and wedged it under his waistband. “They’re not the only ones who are upset about a few things.”

Nick walked over to Kazys and climbed into the saddle.

“If you think this is a fool’s mission, maybe you shouldn’t come along,” Joseph added.

“In case you forgot, my wife is looking after your son. When those men find out who killed their friend…and they will find out sooner or later…they’ll come after your boy and anyone who’s there with him when they arrive. They’ll do it out of principle, no matter what we decide to do from here on out.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Because,” Nick said calmly, “it’s what I would have done.”