And the Hills Opened Up (20 page)

Hayes lifted his beer, finished it in one swallow, and signaled the bartender for another.  Atkins left the saloon and returned to the street, walking without any particular aim.  Couples strolled by, arm in arm, while their unruly children ran ahead, laughing and arguing with each other.  Men stood in doorways, smoking, while old women sat rocking on their front porches, mending piled high in their laps. 

Atkins found himself turned north, where he could see hills rising and the streets ended.  To his right, atop a gradually sloping hillside, was the Rawlins cemetery.  He strolled up the hillside, watching the grass for snakes and gopher holes, and approached the first line of graves.  The cemetery was set in a grove of trees, as if the dead required shade even six feet beneath the earth, and the wind was strong enough to set their branches rustling.

“Evening,” Atkins said aloud, speaking to gravestones.  “Y’all don’t know me, but I thought you might appreciate the company.”

He walked down their line, reading the names and dates.  None of them were older than 1868, some as fresh as ’89.  Yet, unlike Red Earth, this looked like a town that would take.  The railroad was here and more folks would come. The town’s heart would beat on and on, as long as there were people who didn’t mind the wind and the hard winters and the loneliness of so much wide country.  Rawlins might never be a Chicago or a New York, but it would survive in its own dry, stubborn way.

A squirrel jumped to a higher branch, riled by his presence.  Atkins reached the end of gravestones and sat down beside the last.  He made to remove his hat but then recalled he’d left it in his hotel room.  “A man without a hat is no man at all,” Milo Atkins said aloud, echoing his father, the true Sheriff Atkins.  He unbuttoned his revolver from its holster and held it in his hands, examining it.  He looked up at the bruised plum sky and felt a dull coldness flow through him.

“Truly, I am sorry,” he said, his words rising into the sky.  He placed the gun’s barrel in his mouth and bit down, the metal tangy and sharp on his tongue.  He let his mind empty.  He listened to the branches rustling and the wind feathering through the grass.  He thumbed back the revolver’s hammer, took one last sweet-smelling breath, and pulled the trigger.

32

They buried young Milo Atkins the next afternoon, right where he’d died.  Elwood Hayes paid for the coffin, the plot, and the service with the Dennison money he’d lifted from Revis Cooke’s house (he figured the miners would have appreciated their monthly salaries going to such an affair, seeing that none of them had been given such honors themselves).  The burial was sparsely attended by Elwood, Sherriff Taylor, and a handful of curious old folks dressed in their faded Sunday best.  The preacher was an overstuffed old codger with a walrus mustache and a fancy navy blue suit.  He went on about how men were not but dust, life was brief, and the world was nothing more than a veil of tears, his deep voice booming across the bone orchard and disturbing the squirrels as they frolicked.  Elwood bore the preaching patiently, listening to the trees rustle with the occasional breeze and the mosquitoes whine past his ears. 

The preacher halted his yammering and asked Elwood if he’d like to say a few words about his friend.  “Yes, I would,” Elwood said, stepping up behind the grave beside the wheezing preacher.  He looked at Sheriff Taylor and the old folks grouped behind him and squinted in thought, noticing the patches of sunlight that poked through the trees and lay bright on the grass.

“Been a hard week,” he started, deciding to lay it all out.  “Milo and I come recent from a town called Red Earth about fifty miles south.  I was just passing through, but Milo was sheriff there.  When the town was attacked by a devil last Saturday evening, he did his best to stand tall.” 

Elwood paused, putting his thoughts in order.  The old folks exchanged looks with each other like they didn’t know if they’d heard right. 

“Sorry to say, it wasn’t enough.  Most of the townsfolk were slaughtered, including Milo’s wife and boy.  I don’t know what you think about a man killing himself, but Sheriff Atkins had his heart broken back in Red Earth and couldn’t see past it.  You may think what he did here is a sin, but I do not blame him for it.  I was in Red Earth last Saturday night and the wickedness I saw done there puts most anything else to shame.”

Elwood looked down at the coffin exposed in its open grave.  He kicked a clump of dirt on top of it and started down the hillside, not wanting to hear another word out of the fat preacher’s throat or answer thick questions from the old folks.  Nobody would believe him, anyhow—as soon as that bullet had blown out Milo Atkins’ brains, Elwood had been made the last person alive who knew what truly had happened in Red Earth, and one man alone with a wild story was nothing but a lunatic to other folks, no matter how well he told that story.

Elwood walked back through town.  Folks stared as he passed and he was glad he wore his gun hidden, though there wasn’t anything he could do about the swath of bandage on his face.  And the cut was itching, too, itching so bad he had to restrain himself ten times a minute from ripping the bandage off and clawing at the wound with his fingernails.  He’d gone to a sawbones on Cedar Street the day before, an old man who’d whistled when he’d seen the cut and started telling stories about the Civil War.  He’d smiled while he’d sewed Elwood’s cheek together, tugging at the thread like he was mending a shirt. 

The hotel appeared suddenly as if Elwood had dreamt himself there.  He went past the entrance and went into the saloon next door, which was half-empty because it was ten in the morning on a Wednesday.  He walked along the bar, which ran from wall to wall, and bellied up to the far end.  He asked for a bottle of whiskey and a glass and paid in full. 

“Looks like you’re bent on doing some damage.”

Elwood glanced sideways at the man who’d come in behind him.  He pulled at the whiskey bottle’s cork till it popped out, sounding like champagne. 

“Howdy, Sheriff.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Go ahead.”

Elwood poured the whiskey into his glass.  Sheriff Taylor sat down on the stool beside him and set his elbows on the bar, letting out a long sigh. 

“I have been to this place too many times, after too many funerals.”

“Whiskey?”

“Can’t,” Taylor said, glancing at the bartender.  “I’m on duty.”

The bartender nodded and poured the sheriff a cup of coffee. 

“Always helps to have coffee and food in a saloon.  Helps keep folks from acting the fool.”

Elwood threw back the glass of whiskey and poured himself another. 

“That what you think of me, Sheriff?  That I’m acting the fool?”

Taylor blew on his coffee and pushed the steam around.  He sipped gently at it, hissing softly from the corner of his mouth.

“At first I was inclined to that idea.  Now, I’m starting to wonder.”

“Yeah?  It only took Milo chewing on his revolver to start you round?”

Taylor licked his lips and took a longer sip. 

“I was rounding before that, actually.  Mr. Dennison’s people have been inquiring about a payroll stagecoach that was supposed to have returned to Rawlins on Monday.  Say it’s two days late and their man’s never late.”

Elwood smirked and threw back his second glass.

“He’s late because he’s dead.  They’re all dead.”

The sheriff nodded and turned toward Elwood on his stool.  “I told them about you and Milo Atkins, also.  What you’d said happened.”

“That so?”

“Yeah.  They said Red Earth did have a lawman named Milo Atkins, but they never heard of anybody named Elwood Smith.”

Elwood refilled his glass, the itching in his wound starting to lessen. 

“They’d heard of an Elwood Hayes, though.  Said he was a small time crook who’d been buzzing around Colorado for the past couple of years.”

The room, not loud to begin with, had quieted.  Elwood noticed the bartender had gone down to the opposite end of the bar, where he pretended to read the paper while he eavesdropped.  A barking dog ran past the bar’s doorway.

“Never heard of any Hayes,” Elwood said, speaking as though he was tasting the name on his tongue.  “Though I reckon any man named Elwood can’t be all bad.”

The sheriff laughed and raised his coffee cup.

“Here, here.”

Elwood lifted his whiskey glass and threw back his third, starting to feel the earth’s roll.  The sheriff finished his coffee and slid off his stool, setting a couple of pennies on the counter.     

“Anyhow.  When I got the news from San Francisco, I sent two men out to Red Earth.  They should be back in three or four days.  If you and Atkins were speaking the truth about the camp, you’ll be vindicated soon enough.”

Elwood nodded, though he no longer cared one way or another about vindication.  He just wanted to drink from his bottle of whiskey until it was late enough to eat dinner and go to bed. 

Taylor set his hand on Elwood’s shoulder, making him wince. 

“I’m sorry about your friend, Mr. Smith.”

“Thank you,” Elwood said, exhaling whiskey fumes.  “Milo would appreciate that, coming from a fellow star.”

The sheriff laughed, though Elwood didn’t think what he’d said was that funny.  He watched Taylor amble out of the bar and was glad to see him go.  He still bore no fondness for the law.

As Elwood drank the rest of the morning away, he recalled things he did not particularly wish to recall.  Mainly, he thought about those last crowded moments in the Runoff Saloon, picking them over to see if there’d been anything he could have done different to bring his gang out of it alive.

That heavy pounding on the Runoff’s front door.

The way that lit bottle had sailed past the Charred Man and burst into flame.

How the other men had opened fire, their aim wild and shots unmeasured while the Charred Man crossed the room, seeming like he was still walking but going too fast for that, too fast for any bullet to hit. 

How the Charred Man circled round the bar and closed in from the side, holding a straight razor high above his head like he was proud of it, like it was a kingly sword, and Clem Stubbs screaming from his first strike, a slash right across Stubb’s eyes.  The other men so worked up they shot Stubbs instead of the demon, plugging the big man four or five times before they realized what they’d done and adjusted their aim.

And from there, nothing but men dying as the Charred Man set upon them like a whirlwind made flesh. The demon fought low to the ground, dropping the four unarmed prospectors by severing their hamstrings and slicing their throats while they writhed on the ground.  The bartender, Caleb, ran at the demon with his empty scattergun raised like a club, getting in one good hard swing before the Charred Man stepped aside and cut at his ankles, sending him sprawling into a pile.

Hayes, his own revolver still in its holster, had just enough time to light a second bottle of moonshine while Roach Clayton and Owen stumbled backward, fumbling bullets while they tried to reload.  The Charred Man running at them, then breaking to his right and coming for Hayes instead.  He’d hurled the second bottle, aiming for the demon’s chest, but missed with that one, too, and felt a streak of fire raking across his face in consequence, followed by a rising as the Charred Man lifted Hayes into the air with one arm, squeezing his windpipe shut while he looked him over.

Hayes tried to cuss him out, but his words were nothing but choked sputtering, gargles of sound, and then he was already flying across the room.  His last sight was the saloon going up in flames and the widowed ladies raising their heads above the bar like three pale, blinking ghosts, uncertain of the ugly sight before them.

And where was Ingrid?  Why hadn’t she come to the stairs?

“You all right, sir?”

Elwood raised his head.  The bartender had come over and was drying a beer mug with his apron.

“Want some water to go with that whiskey?”

Elwood frowned at the bottle at his elbow—he’d gone through a third of it already.

“What time is it?”

“Just past noon.”

“Noon,” Elwood said, rubbing his face and sliding off his stool.  “Well, might as well get some grub.”  He headed for the saloon door and the bartender called after him, reminding him to take his bottle along.  Elwood waved off the suggestion and pushed his way through the saloon’s swinging doors, the sun blinding him with its noonday glare as he stepped into the street.  “Goddamn,” he shouted, addressing no one in particular. 

He started walking along the storefronts, peering into each window, but after a few minutes Elwood made his way to a short order down the street, a place he hadn’t been to yet, where he bought himself a plate piled high with stringy, peppered chicken and watery potatoes.  He ate with relish, elbows on the table, and drank cup after cup of coffee as he bolted the mess down.  The food revived him.  When he finished eating, he pushed his chair back and let out a loud belch of appreciation. 

A portly, thick-necked man sitting at the table beside his looked up and whistled.  He was wearing a shabby tweed coat with the elbows patched up, like a farmer wore when he was visiting town and thinking he looked pretty fancy.  He smelled like manure and wet dog.

“My Lord,” the farmer said.  “Haven’t seen food put away like that since I fed the hogs this morning.”

“I was hungry,” Elwood said, patting his stomach.  “I buried my friend today and that can put a man to feeding.”

“Did he feed like that, too?  That so, he must have choked to death.”

The farmer chortled at his own joke, his fat cheeks bunching up beneath his eyes.  Elwood sprung forward, crossing the distance between their tables and tackling the farmer off his chair.  They rolled around on the floor, the farmer screaming murder, and Elwood started working him over, increasing the jolt behind his punches the more the farmer hollered.

“You fat sack of cow shit,” Elwood shouted, his mind filled with an angry buzzing.  “Lay still and take your goddamn beating.” 

Something cracked in the farmer’s face, probably his nose, and Elwood felt himself pulled off by several strong hands.  He thrashed wildly as they manhandled him, not finished, but he stilled as he felt a knife’s blade at his throat.  The farmer sat up, clutching his face.

“Wash only joshing,” the farmer said, his words muddled through his hands.  “Wash the hell wrong with you?”

“I wouldn’t know where to start with that,” Elwood said, raising his hands to show he was through and extracting himself from his handlers.  “You just remember to watch your words, you old hog.”

Elwood pushed his way through the crowd of gawkers and left the restaurant.  He went back to his hotel and climbed the stairs, his legs quivering and knuckles swelling.  He went into his room, gathered his few belongings, and threw his saddle bags over his shoulder.  Always, it turned like this.  Always, always, always.

Elwood went back downstairs and exited the hotel.  Clouds had blown in, making the sunlight tolerable.  He went down to the livery stables and sold the four horses they’d brought from Red Earth to the livery’s owner, who gave him a fair enough price.  From there he walked down to the train depot on Front Street and spoke with the stationmaster, who told him the afternoon train was due in twenty minutes, headed for Cheyenne.  He bought a one-way ticket and sat down on one of the platform’s benches.  He rubbed his swollen knuckles, enjoying the pain.  He pictured the farmer’s surprised face and smiled, feeling the warmth of his morning’s whiskey returning.