The Savage Gun (13 page)

“Jesus,” Army said.

By then, all the men had crowded around Pete to hear his story. They had him ringed and walled in. Pete was beginning to leak sweat like a skin sieve. His face was bathed in perspiration, droplets dripping from his brows, his nose, and his chin.

“What did the boy do?” Dick Tanner asked. He had a quirly in his mouth and struck a match to light it. The flare of the flame lit his eyes for a moment. They appeared, under Dick's thick brows, to bore straight into Pete's with diabolic intensity.

Pete blinked. He swallowed.

“I, ah, and this might sound funny,” Pete said, “but I think that pup was torturin' Luke. I couldn't hear what he said, but I bet he was askin' about all of us. And he had that Colt in his hand the whole time. A gun like I never seen before.”

“You better explain that, Pete,” Ollie said.

“Like I said, it was filigreed with silver. And I think them grips was ivory. Not pearl, but pure ivory. And that silver sparkled to beat hell.”

“But you don't know what the kid did to Luke because you hightailed it out of there. Right, Pete?”

“Yeah,” Pete said. “I got the hell out. You would have, too, Ollie. Luke wasn't goin' to make it, and it was two against one. I'd already got burnt twice and I didn't want to end up like Luke with my guts pourin' out of my belly.”

Ollie said nothing. His jaw hardened and his face tightened into a mask that made Pete shrink back. The smoke from Tanner's cigarette hung in the air like a pall over Pete's head.

“It's just two of 'em,” Army said, breaking the silence. “They come after us, they're worm meat.”

Ollie fixed Army with a glare, his eyes burning through narrow slits like the eyes of a snake about to strike.

“Well, that kid is going to come after us, for sure,” Ollie said. “You got to watch somebody like that.”

“What do you mean?” Red Dillard asked.

“He's got something in his craw and he don't have no sense, Red. That makes him dangerous. He put Luke down and Luke probably spilled everything he knows about us.”

“Hell, he's just a kid,” Mort said. “Ain't he, Pete?”

“He's a kid what makes your skin crawl. You see him with that fancy pistol and you damned sure know he means business.”

“Shut up, Pete. You had the chance to kill both the kid and the old man. 'Stead, you tucked your tail between your legs and run off like a scared possum.”

“That ain't fair, Ollie. I was outnumbered.”

“I ain't afraid of no kid,” Army gruffed, swelling up his chest.

“Me, neither,” Mort said.

Ollie threw a hand at all of them and turned away, lost in thought.

The windblown rain blasted the adobe, howled outside, and shot freshets of air through the shutters. A fine mist mingled with the smoke from Dick's cigarette and the room darkened until all the men were faceless shadows. There was only the orange glow from the tip of Dick's cigarette and a silence filling up with men's private thoughts.

Ollie stood there, as if listening to something besides the wind and the rain, something underneath, like hoofbeats or the tread of a man's boot. Silly, he thought. Nobody could ride down on them in such a violent storm.

Nobody, except a crazy kid with a fancy gun, and an old galoot packin' a Yellow Boy.

He felt itchy and his nerves put a tic on one side of his face. That was annoying because he couldn't stop it. That tic always hit him when he ran into something he didn't understand, or, like when he was a young boy listening to another kid tell a ghost story that made the hackles stiffen and shiver on the back of his neck.

It was that kind of a feeling, in that dark room, with shadowy men all around him all thinking the same thing.

That kid was going to hunt them down, and if he was crazy, maybe from grief, he was going to be dangerous.

There was fear in that room, Ollie thought. And some of it was infecting him, damn it all. It was fear of the unknown. The kind of fear that could take root in a man and turn his guts into a hatching of winged insects, all swarming and fluttering until a man's knees turned to jelly as he waited for a door to open, or someone to step out of nowhere with a gun his hand. Someone with the face of a kid and the heart of a killer bent on revenge.

Ollie took a breath and let it out as if it might relieve that nameless fear that was beginning to claw at him, to sniff inside his brain like some prowling beast that only hunted at night, in the darkness of a man's head.

13

THE SMOKE ROSE TO THE TOP OF THE SPRUCE-BOUGH SHELTER, seeped through the limbs and needles. Ben fought through them with his hands, pushing the boughs, widening them to make a smoke hole. The burning pine made a lot of smoke, too much for the small enclosure. He widened the smoke hole and more smoke rose and flowed through into the night where the wind snatched it away, tore it to scraps of wispy confetti. Then, even these dissipated and vanished, becoming just so much atmosphere.

He looked down at John, who had not stirred. He looked so young when he was asleep, but young Savage had grown old in the space of a day. Shadows danced across John's face, chased by firelight the color of peaches. Firelight that painted the young man's face with its soft brush, flickered next to the hairline, shaped and reshaped John's nose and his chin, blurring the cheekbones in pastel light, bending the jawline up and down in the mystical play of those fluid shadows.

Some of the tiny pale hairs on John's face were beginning to curl like the curlicue appendages on baby pigs. In another few days, Ben thought, John would have to shave once again, and when he bent down for a closer look, he saw that there were little dark specks where the darker hairs were pushing up and Ben knew he'd be peppered with those in no time. The boy was growing into a man before his very eyes.

And he sat there, listening to the soothing sound of the rain, trying not to fall asleep. He put another small piece of rotting wood on the fire, inching it from the bottom with a gentle shove. Sparks rose inside the smoke, winking like tiny fireflies on a brief and dazzling flight. The smell of the wood smoke was almost as satisfying as that from a pipe with apple-scented tobacco and the loamy aromas of an Alabama field.

John slept deep beneath an ocean of soft rain and whispering wind through spruce boughs. He floated through October hills when the sumacs and the maples blazed with a vermilion fire and the oak leaves yellowed and browned in shady hollows and on the ridges where the white-tailed deer nibbled the last of the acorns while gray squirrels chattered on the slopes, their bottle-brush tails flicking nervously as they scurried through the skeletons of fallen leaves like fugitive church mice.

In the dream, John picked up dead leaves of various hues and stuffed them into an empty flour sack. The leaves kept changing shapes and textures. The maple and the sumac leaves were bleeding when he picked them up, and the yellow leaves ran like melted butter as he put them into the bag. The brown leaves sprouted little spindly legs and kicked the sides of the sack once they were inside.

He walked to a flat stone beneath a tall oak tree halfway up a deep hollow. He poured out the contents of the bag and then began stuffing them back in, squeezing the bag at various points to fashion legs and arms, feet and hands. The leaves changed into cloth scraps as he picked them up, and their colors bled through the sack as it took the shape of a rag doll. He made a face by squeezing the neck, and he picked up dead pine needles and used them for hair as they turned to brown yarn. He fixed acorns on the face for eyes and stripped a pinecone for teeth. He placed a hickory nut on the center for a nose.

He positioned the doll in the center of the flat rock, which transformed itself into a small bed with white sheets. He smoothed the air and it turned golden in the sunlight. The nose shaped itself and the brown teeth turned white and a small smiling mouth appeared, changed into a dazzling smile.

The rag doll spoke in a hollow, sepulchral voice.

“Mommy, Mommy,” it cried and reached out to him. Its hand passed through his chest and clutched his heart. The little fingers squeezed his heart and the doll continued calling, “Mommy, Mommy.”

Just before John awoke, the doll transformed itself again and became alive in the spitting image of his sister Alice. And this time, as its arms reached for him, it called out: “Johnny, Johnny.”

“Hey, boy, you having a nightmare.” Ben's voice boomed inside the shelter.

John opened his eyes and put up a hand to shield them from the firelight.

“Alice,” John said. “I had a dream about Alice.”

“You didn't sleep long. Hour and a half, two hours maybe. You want to go back to sleep?”

John shook his head.

“No. I couldn't. Not now.”

“Wind's died down some. Not raining so hard.”

“You better get some sleep, Ben. I'll tend the fire and keep a lookout.”

“I could use a few winks.”

John was wide awake when Ben curled up on his bedroll and closed his eyes. The dream had been disturbing, but he recognized it for what it was, a deep wish that he could bring Alice back to life, could once again hear her voice and her laughter. Now, in the darkness of night, the tragedy of her death became even more poignant and devastating to him. An innocent life snuffed out like a candle before she even had a chance to grow and learn and become.

He pushed down his anger, but he felt it boiling beneath the surface. He saw once again the faces of those responsible for the murders and his resolve quickened as he fed the fire and listened to the steady drone of falling rain. He watched the smoke rise through the widened hole in the spruce boughs, then looked at Ben, who had begun to snore softly. He was glad that Ben was still alive and with him. But he would have given anything to have had a rifle or pistol with him up in the mine. Now, he knew, he would never be caught like that again. He would always wear his pistol when awake, and he would track down those murderers if it took him the rest of his life.

Ben slept for better than four hours. John watched him awaken by himself and wondered why he wasn't sleepy. Then, a moment later, he knew why. The rain had stopped, and it meant that they could get on the trail of the outlaws again. He took some comfort in believing that they would have holed up during the night as well. He had no idea how far ahead of them Ollie and the others were, but he hoped, before day's end, he would pick up their tracks as they headed for Fountain Creek and Pueblo.

“You ain't sleepy, Johnny?”

John thought about it for a moment.

“Naw.” He felt strangely alive, with even an electric tingle in his veins. In the cold of a pale dawn, with the sky like dirty cream, the tattered remnants of clouds floating in the sky like thin loaves of cotton, all desire for sleep had vanished. After such a dark night, the sun was a welcome harbinger of a day good for tracking. A day when murderous men might be caught up to and cornered, to meet justice at the business end of a Colt .45.

“I feel like I been dry washed in a big old milk churn and hung out on a damned clothesline. My eyes burn like they been rubbed with chili peppers, and there's places on my back I swear still got little sharp stones buried in 'em.”

“That's just your age, Ben.”

“Haw. Age ain't got nothin' to do with it. I got tender skin and I need eight good hours in the kip.”

John laughed. “Let's get out of here,” he said as he tied his bedroll behind his saddle. Ten minutes later they were back on the trail.

The land was drying up and there were piñons now among the pines, their seeds littering the ground like peppercorns. The sun was well up in the sky, still feeble as it fought through fleets of long, basking clouds. The back range was a faint blue ridge, and another behind that one was all gray and hazy, so far away a man could not reach it in a week.

“I feel like a new man, Ben. It's age, and you know it.”

“Yair, your age gives your ball its bounce, Johnny. You don't need to lord it over me.”

“Sleep in the saddle, then, Ben. I'm the one watching for tracks.”

“The onliest tracks you're gonna see this mornin' is made by runnin' water. Them cutthroats probably rode all night, that gold burnin' holes in their pockets.”

“No, I figure they holed up somewhere. I feel it in my bones, Ben. I can almost smell 'em.”

And then they saw the 'dobe, one wall burnished a rich golden tan by the sun. John reined up, caught by surprise. Ben let out a long sigh.

“Well, well, well,” Ben said. “What do we have here?”

“That's damned sure on the trail them fellers took. Tracks were washed away, but the trail now, that's been standing out clear.”

“Johnny, all I can say is you're a born tracker. I thought we was just ridin' aimless.”

“I'll bet Ollie and his bunch holed up there to ride out the storm.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“A feeling.”

“A feeling? That's all?”

“Ben, did you ever think you could read another man's thoughts? I mean . . .”

“I know what you mean. Nope. I ain't no clairvoyant.”

“Neither am I, but sometimes I think you can get into a man's mind, like if he lets his thoughts loose to float out there where a man can pick them up. I think those men stayed in that adobe shack last night. I can smell fresh horseshit.”

“Maybe they're still in there, all of 'em. Asleep.”

John slipped the Winchester from its scabbard. He and Ben had both cleaned their rifles and pistols before setting out that morning. He looked at the surrounding terrain, checking specifically for high points overlooking the adobe. There were none within rifle range. The shack appeared to be atop a shelf overlooking a large plain. Anyone approaching from the other side, the front, could be seen for a long way.