The Winter Family (42 page)

“Of course, he also made sure that the investigation won’t turn his way,” Matt continued. “Ross did a lot of talking to the federals after he got picked up. About how Mister O’Shea hired the Winter Family to run off some troublesome Indians. Not that he’d be likely to be believed, but it helps tamp down the talk.”

“Enough,” O’Shea said. “Bill doesn’t need to hear any of this. You two are supposed to be making a plan.”

“True enough,” Matt said, squinting his eyes through the smoke. “Winter’s put together a gang of five now?”

“Yes sir,” Bill said.

“The Empire brothers, Johnson, Ross, and himself?”

“Yes,” Bill said.

Matt nodded. He sucked on of his cigarette, held his breath, and exhaled. “I don’t imagine there’s anyone else for him to pick up, do you?”

“No,” Bill said. “That’s all that’s left of them.”

“So the main thing is, where’s he off to next?”

“Oh, they’re coming here,” Bill said.

“You think so?” Matt said.

“Where else does he have to go?”

“How about anywhere but here?” Matt said. “It’d be suicide to come around this way with only four men to back him up.”

“Winter has done a lot of things that people could call suicidal and he’s still here,” Bill said. After a pause, he added, “But this time I think he knows it’s the end. I can feel it too.”

“Damn straight,” O’Shea said.

“I guess the townsfolk know now?” Bill asked.

“The town has been alerted,” O’Shea said.

“They didn’t run after all?” Bill asked.

“No,” O’Shea said with pride. “They didn’t.”

“Any other Pinkertons?” Bill asked.

“Just me,” Matt said.

“Just you?”

“You want more of them here?” Matt said. “You’re the outlaw. Not me.”

“You ain’t going to be enough,” Bill said.

Matt raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve seen what you can do and I’ve seen what he can do,” Bill said. “I’m telling you.”

“Guess we’ll see,” Matt said, leaning back so that he was mostly hidden in shadow.

“Are you sure they’re coming here?” O’Shea said. “That seems mad, even for them.”

“I don’t think you fully understand the situation,” Bill said. “We had a bond like nothing you’ll ever know. It was just us alone, outside everything. And I broke it. I chased him down and tried to kill him. They’re coming back here for me. And you’re not going to stop them, Shakespeare.”

Matt looked like he was going to say something witty. Instead he asked O’Shea, “Mind if I talk to Mister Bread in private?”

“Why?” O’Shea asked.

“Well, that’s private,” Matt said.

O’Shea glowered at them a little but stomped out of the room.

“What have you got to say to me that you can’t say in front of him?” Bill asked.

“Sit down, Bill,” Matt said. “I ain’t going to bite you.”

Bill remained standing, lightly spinning his hat in his hands.

“I always heard you were a drinker, Bill Bread.”

“I was.”

“I guess people can change.”

“They can,” Bill said. “I know they usually don’t. But they can.”

“Hmm,” Matt said.

“What do you want to talk about?” Bill said.

“Whether you changed or not,” Matt said.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, you had the drop on Winter, he got loose. You had the drop on Johnson, he got loose. Now you come back talking all this doom and gloom.”

“You wouldn’t have said that if you’d been here two years ago,” Bill said. “I saved this town. Winter was going to sow salt in the ruins of this place.”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “But you didn’t kill him then, either. You lived happily enough not twenty miles from him. It’s only now that O’Shea made you choose.”

“I think you know why,” Bill said.

“Do you?”

“You killed your brother, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Matt said.

“Why?”

“To save my other brother.”

“I think you just didn’t want to live like him.”

“No,” Matt said. “I could have lived like Lukas. I could have been like you, Bill Bread. Wouldn’t have been no trouble at all. When Lukas showed up in Phoenix back in seventy-nine we made a go of it. It was wild back then, just wild, but me and Lukas carved out a place for ourselves. The two of us. The fastest guns in the Arizona Territory. But my little brother. Austin.”

Matt shook his head and stared at nothing, his face slack with old grief.

“He’d just. You know. It’s like if you tell someone to watch his breathing, to just think about his breathing, it gets all messed up. You know? All of a sudden you can’t breathe, because now you’re thinking about it.”

Matt looked at Bill and Bill nodded.

“Around our place Austin could always hit the target and draw his gun quick and he could spin a pistol on his fingers and toss it in the air, and all that. Then we’d ride out and he’d make these mistakes, every time, forgetting to flip the safety off and missing by yards and getting himself shot. When we got back he’d be shaking. Crying out in his sleep. And Lukas wouldn’t let him go his own way. Kept saying that Austin just needed more nerve. Like we had something that he didn’t. But I wonder whether it wasn’t the other way around. That we were missing something that Austin had. What do you think, Bill Bread?”

“I don’t know,” Bill said.

“Anyway,” Matt said. “I didn’t kill Lukas because I didn’t want to live like him. I did it for Austin. He wasn’t going to make it and I had to choose. I could go with Lukas, and Austin would die, or I could kill Lukas, and Austin would live. So I chose.”

“Well,” Bill said. “I chose too.”

Matt sucked on the cigarette and then said, “After all this time? I’m skeptical, Bill.”

“Then be skeptical,” Bill said. “You’ll see how they feel about me when they get here. They’re going to answer all your questions for you.”

“Hmm,” Matt said, as he stubbed out his cigarette. “We’ll see.”

“You should have brought more men,” Bill said.

“He’s just a man,” Matt said.

“Yeah,” Bill said. “That’s all.”

The forest snaked north of town for miles. Sometimes it was so thin it was no more than a light veil between great white fields. Still it was there, long and unbroken, and it was through this bridge of darkness that the Winter Family came upon the town.

They stayed off the roads and so it took them five days and they had little to eat and drink. The snow was deep and their horses were exhausted and their legs were cut from the crust of ice on the top of the snow. When they finally came out of the forest up onto the road
they looked like what they were: a bunch of middle-aged men who would soon be dead.

The Winter Family was, at that time, twenty-seven years old. It had ranged in size from five men to thirty and they had committed every abominable crime under the sun. But their world had steadily shrunk. All of that free land, untamed and wild, that had taken them in every time and hidden them and made them whole. It had melted away, leaving them to the mercy of their many enemies, exhausted and exposed and old. Until it came to this.

It was a clear day, very cold, and the sun was in the middle of the sky to the south. The five horses stood dully in the road. The men checked their weapons one by one.

“Well, boys,” Quentin said, “once more unto the breach.”

Johnson was crouched up over his horse’s neck, almost doubled with pain. He didn’t make a sound but it was clear his shoulder was hurting him badly. It had been difficult for him to sleep and he was moving slowly.

Every now and then one of them would be racked with a cough.

Winter leaned back in his saddle, comfortable and clear-eyed. In his hand was Noah Ross’s pocket watch, which he had unearthed a few miles back, where he had buried it two years ago when he had left Time behind with all the other trappings of civilization. He remembered Noah’s final words. He remembered the warning Captain Jackson had shouted at him on the slopes of the San Tan Mountain. And he watched the second hand move. All that movement just to go round and round. Never actually getting anywhere. Till it wound down and stopped. There was a lesson in it, but whether it was for him, O’Shea, or Bill, he couldn’t say. Nor did he care. Parables had always been his father’s specialty. He was long past them. The watch tumbled out of his fingers and vanished in the snow.

“Let’s go get Bill,” he said.

The Empire brothers whooped and spurred their horses to life. Winter’s horse jumped to follow. Johnson came next and Quentin brought up the rear, not holding his reins. His rifle was out and he was steering with his knees.

A sentry sat on his horse in the middle of the road. When he saw
the five of them galloping toward him at first he couldn’t believe it. O’Shea’s men were all over the roads and he didn’t see how the Family could be here without anyone knowing. He scrambled trying to get the trumpet out of his saddlebag. They were coming so fast. So fast.

Charlie was ahead now, he was the better rider, and he had drawn his pistol, his thumb was on the hammer, and he was closing his left eye to aim. He fired and the bullet hit the sentry, who fell off of his horse.

They came into the town.

“Yeehaw!” Charlie said, leaning back in the saddle and drawing his other pistol.

“Fuck you all, fuck all y’all!” Johnny screamed, drawing his two pistols as well.

Quentin hunched forward and put his rifle to his shoulder and drew a bead on a man standing on the boards in front of the bank in the cold winter sunshine. Pulled the trigger and dropped the man from a hundred feet.

Winter rode in the middle of his men. He had not yet drawn a weapon.

A rush of people came out into the street, and suddenly the Winter Family was outnumbered. The mob was not shooting very well because they were afraid, taking shelter behind barrels and posts and windowsills, but the road quickly turned into a death trap.

“Shit!” Johnny cried, spurring his horse to the side of the road while firing both his pistols. The townspeople scattered. One dropped dead. Johnny dismounted to take cover behind the corner of the inn.

Someone was blowing a trumpet now.

Johnson was following Johnny when his horse was shot and he dropped down in the road. His rifle skittered away and then out of nowhere someone was right up on him, an ordinary-looking man who ran up from between two buildings with a pistol in his hand. Johnson rolled onto his back and produced the shotgun, now sawed off, and gave the man one barrel in the chest. But Johnson had been holding the shotgun in one hand, like a pistol, and the recoil broke his wrist.

“Fuck!” he cried.

Then they were on him, four men, two of them almost boys,
firing their guns again and again, bangs and little puffs of smoke, and holes kept appearing in his body, one after another, until he was crawling in the icy mud, going nowhere in particular. Then one hit him in the head and he stopped.

Quentin fired his rifle and pumped the lever and fired again. He hit two of the men around Johnson. One of them managed to get up and run halfway to cover before Quentin shot him again. Then a bullet whined by and punched a hole in Quentin’s hat, and he ducked down and kicked his horse into the alley between the dry goods store and the bank on the right side of the street.

Charlie was on his feet now too, a pistol smoking in each hand, and he ran to where his brother was leaning against the wall of the inn.

“They’re in here,” Johnny said. “I think most of them are in here.”

“You hurt?” Charlie asked.

“Naw. What’s the boss doing?”

Winter remained alone in the middle of the street. He saw something to the west and turned his horse by grabbing the reins with his left hand. At the same time he drew his pistol from his holster with his right hand and shot.

“I do believe he’s found Mister Bread,” Charlie said.

A man leaned around the corner of the building and fired a shot and hit Charlie in the face. Johnny raised his gun and fired back while his brother screamed and bled.

Winter had seen Bread standing on the stoop of his little house with his Winchester rifle in his hands. By the time Bill had lifted it to his shoulder Winter had already drawn, fired, and hit. Bill’s hand broke open and the wooden butt of his rifle splintered. Then Winter spurred his horse and he was on top of him.

Bill tried to turn and run back in the house but Winter jumped off his horse and landed on Bill’s back, knocking him to the ground.

“No! No, Winter, don’t!”

Winter put one boot on Bill’s neck and stood up. Two men were riding at him from the west, and the mob was coming from the crossroads. Winter raised his gun and squinted to aim and then he started banging the hammer of his pistol and pulling the trigger. The two men on horseback dropped out of their saddles and their horses came
to skidding stops. He only got one of the men to the east but the mob broke.

Bill reached up with his left hand, the one that hadn’t been shot, trying to grab Winter’s testicles. Winter caught Bill’s wrist and twisted the arm so that his elbow was facing up. Then he put his leg over Bill’s arm and sat down on Bill’s elbow.

“No, Auggie, no, ahh!”

Bill screamed as the arm broke.

Back at the inn, Johnny went around the corner with a pistol in each hand. He kicked the door open and started shooting, using his thumbs to cock the hammers again and again. Seven men were inside. Bullets hummed and zipped through the air. Johnny was screaming. He got hit quite a few times and then he fell down to one side. He kept shooting as well as he could, calmly aiming one gun and shooting and then aiming the other and shooting it too. From his position in the corner of the room he managed to kill four and send the other three scrambling out the door, shooting over their shoulders blind and wild and afraid.

“Fuck all y’all!”

Outside Charlie was kneeling in the mud, touching his face. It felt foreign to him, numb and strange and gushing with blood. Teeth and a chunk of lip came away in his hands. He tried to stop the bleeding by tying his handkerchief around his chin.

On the other side of the street Quentin was grinning and jamming more rounds into his Winchester. Looking left and right and humming, thinking that they would consecrate this ground far above O’Shea’s poor power to add or detract.