Here by the Bloods (18 page)

I rub my hands in the warmth of the meager flame, my back to the westward approach. The orange light cuts the darkness, dancing off the rocks and the crystals of the fallen snow. A horse whinnies in the distance, drawing closer, no doubt excited by the smell of burning sagebrush and the humanity it intimates. Without taking my eyes from the flame, I detect a second rider a few yards behind the first.

An exasperated male voice barks at me before the speaker has bothered to dismount. “I said no fires.” I hear the man swing down from his saddle and hastily tie off his horse. “Ain't they teach you no brains in Topeka?”

I snap-pivot from my seat and bring up the Spencer, leveling the barrel at his chest. His arms go up instinctively, but there is an amused aspect to his silhouette, an attitude befitting a man wholly accustomed to staring down the business end of a weapon.

“Keep 'em up,” I say. “And walk over to me, real slow.” The Snowman, the dreaded marauder of the West, complies. He steps toward me, into the light.

There in the flickering fire, his face exposed, I see what Sheriff must have seen just before the killer's slug ripped through him—how perfectly the outlaw's blue mascada, knotted around his neck with an elegant four-in-hand, matches his murderous eyes. But the final confirmation comes not from the sight of the peacock bandana, but from the absence, in his voice, of the slightest Dixie twang. “Evening, Two-Trees,” he says.

“Evening, Willis.” The mere utterance of the phony name causes a pearly-toothed grin to bloom across his face. I pluck the pistol from his holster—the same silver-plated forty-four he unveiled at the Jewel—and, pawing about his waist, discover a snub-nose backup, which I also liberate from his reach.

“Can I assume that the previous owner of the suit you're wearing will no longer need it?”

“It ain't my blood stained across it.” I push back from him as a woman's voice chirps from the other side of the rocks.

She strides around the corner, steaming the air with her breath. The tone out of her mouth is put-upon, coarse, even bitchy. “Where the hell is everybod—” Her tiny, delicate frame, swaddled beneath a thick, woolen blanket, startles upright. The whites of her eyes spread wide as saucers.

“Harlan!” she says, dumbfounded at the sight of me. But then, without hesitation, she bursts into tears and runs toward me, her voice softening. “Oh, Harlan! He has kidnapped me. Thank God you're all right.”

I keep the gun trained on the dude. She touches my arm, but the mind-sucking electricity is gone, replaced by a hollow, algid emptiness.

“Get off me,” I say, nudging her away. “Go sit by the fire.” She blinks at me, wounded, her mouth hanging open.

“I swear to you, I don't know what's going on. He dragged me here—”

“Ain't you spun enough lies, sweetheart?” I say. Genevieve moves numbly to the fire and sinks down onto a dry stone.

“Clever work, slipping into his suit like that,” the dude says, though there is not much duded up about him tonight. The well-worn leathers, the splattered boots—every inch of him is accessorized for a hard night's ride. Soft gloves protect his precious, bomb-making hands—his bread and butter—with the forethought of a surgeon. He has even let his beard go—smart, another layer from the cold. The silk bandana is the only hint of flair.

“I reckon we are both guilty of playin' dress-up. 'Cept you got to be a right more fancy in your costumes.”

“Let's talk about this reasonable.”

“What was his name?” I ask.

“Who, Jessup?”

“No, the poor sap you let hang in your stead.”

“This is crazy,” Genevieve says, jumping up from her perch. “Do you mean to suggest that Avery is the blasted
Snowman
? Harlan, put that gun down. You're not in your right mind.”

“Nothing to suggest. He told me himself. Do not make me tell you again to sit down.” She plops back down, a scolded child in the corner. “See, there have been all sorts of little dribs of things that did not quite fit in all this. Like how come a famous riverboat gambler no one ever heard of comes to a little Podunk town like the Bend and proves himself to be, by all accounts, a pretty piss-poor gambler? Be honest, what with all that has been happening I cannot say I ever would have had cause to put two and two together. But as it is, the only fella I ever seen you beat at a poker table turns out to be part of your gang. Now what am I supposed to think of that? Why on earth would a desperado with a price on his head risk coming into town to swindle fifty dollars from a bunch of hayseeds? Unless the real reason he was here was so you could chase after him. You had banks to rob, safes to blow up. You had dynamite you needed to lay out in that canyon.”

“Now see here, Two-Trees, let me put my arms down.”

“I will shoot you where you stand, LaForge.” I throw back the hammer on the Spencer and let him see the unwavering steadiness of the barrel aimed straight at his heart. “Must be a burden, being the only one could set them charges. No one to delegate to. Or maybe that's the secret. Ship don't sail without you.”

“You flatter me, friend. If only I had the skill of the Snowman.”

“You got skill to a fault. That is what done you in.”

“How do you figure?”

“You were stuck in town. A fella as fancy as Avery Willis cannot just sneak out of town, unobserved. So you had to concoct some ruse to get you out. You had a right fun time, playing Willis. Too much fun, I would say. Never quite figured you for the type to get all riled over being cheated. But then you had to jump on that filly. See, the thing is, I seen a fella jump off a railing like that and land full bore into a gallop, but only once. It was when Sheriff got shot. Good horsemanship is hard to hide, especially in the heat of the moment, even if the moment is fake. You were hell and gone.” I turn and look at her, fighting back the sickening, dull thud in the pit of my stomach. “All you needed then was someone to cover for you.”

“No,” she says.

“I don't care how tired a fella is, he don't sleep through a hanging.”

“I told you, Avery was embarrassed by that foolish pursuit of the cardsharp. He was too mortified to show his face.”

“And I might ought have believed that,” I say, “but then Mister Willis did not count on crossing my path at the stables that night.”

“As I told you,” the dude says, “I could not sleep. I needed some air.”

“In your riding clothes? Even in the dead of night, it threw me, kind of like it does now, catching sight of you dressed down like that. And you had a saddlebag with you. Who carries something like that on a late-night stroll?”

“Like you said, I'm fancy.”

“Not that night, you weren't. I reckon that set going in my head a whole string of business. But the thing that clinched it was when you had me put my hand on that filly's neck. Poor girl was sweating like a whore.”

“So I'd been riding, what of it?”

“Shoulda kept riding. You might got away with all of it, you done that. But no. No, you had to come back to town. That was your mistake. You were free and clear, you had the loot, you had your legend, and you risk it all. For what? Just to watch us squirm in the aftermath? No, sir. That does not figure for the Snowman. He is too smart for that. From that moment on, you were scrambling. You could not have any loose ends and the only folks who saw you that night were me . . . me and Otis Chandler's boy. And when I showed up, he was already dead.”

“Oh you are punch-drunk, you know that?” he says.

“You strangled that poor child and tried to make it look like Indians. Except Dineh do not strangle and you should have known that. Mistakes pile up when you get careless. It was not dust on your jacket. It was
flour
.” It flashes over his face, a fleeting wisp of a grin, and then he stifles it. But he knows I've seen it. “I will not ask you again. What was his name?”

Slowly, without any hint of subterfuge, he puts down his arms. “His name was Carlyle. Clay Carlyle.”

“What are you doing?” she says.

“It's all right, darling. No sense belaboring this.”

“Poor old Clay,” I say.

“Clay was a loyal soldier.”

“Nobody's that loyal. That no-luck sap really thought you were coming to save him.”

“Somebody had to swing. Plan don't work otherwise.”

“You killed the man what raised me. Gunned him down and made it personal.”

“Clay shot the sheriff.”

“No, 'cause that would make the sheriff a liar. And that he was not. See, the thing that nobody ever picked up on was the way Sheriff got kilt. 'Twas a forty-four slug they pulled out of his heart. But old Clay, he was holding a shotgun the whole time. Sheriff knew you. Knew your face. And he said with his dying breath, hand to God, that it was LaForge himself what fired the money shot. That means not only did you step in front of Clay to kill Sheriff, but you dropped your mask so he would know it was you. Been gnawing at me all the time until you pulled that forty-four out your belt to go ride off after Jessup.”

“Lots of forty-fours around.”

“It was you. You looked at me. Same eyes you're looking at me with now.”

The snow crunches beyond the rocks behind me. “Someone's coming,” she says.

“That would be your partner,” I say, without turning to face the newcomer. The air cracks with the distinct, metallic click of a pistol hammer drawn back into readiness. A graveled, venal voice peals from the shadows.

“Drop that rifle.” Boone sidesteps into the corner of my vision, the engraved revolver squeezed tightly in two white-knuckle fists. “I'll shoot you dead, son. Neither one of us want that.” I lower the Spencer. LaForge swoops in and takes it from me, before reclaiming his guns from the ground. The woman's fingers brush against my hips as she relieves me of the Colts. I watch her, but she will not bring her eyes to mine, so I turn to face Boone. He wears a long black overcoat, the collar upturned against the wind.

“I tell you, Boone, I always knew you to tilt the tables in your favor, but I never figured you had the sand to bankrupt your own town. Much less have Sheriff taken out.

“The hell you talking about?”

“Sheriff always did right by you. You let him bleed out in the street.”

“I had no hand in that. Pardell got himself killed like a dang idiot.”

“Let it drift, Walter,” LaForge says. “The cat's out of the bag.”

“What?”

“The kid knows.”

A spark of stunned wonderment flickers across the mayor's face. He snuffs it out as quick as it comes and then his eyes narrow with pitiless scorn. “Then why the fuck is he breathing?”

“I brought your loot. Every cent of it,” I say, throwing a nod toward the mules and their burdensome cargo. “That ought to be worth something.”

“Maybe it is,” LaForge says. “We can talk about it.”

“Now you want to cut him in?”

“It's just business, Walter.”

“He probably brought the Pinkertons out here. You check these rocks?” Boone says, jabbing the pistol out toward the night for emphasis.

“Pinkertons are dead,” I say. “All of them.”

“Horseshit.”

“Ambushed. His handiwork got most of them,” I say, nodding toward LaForge. “Them what was left, Indians took care of.”

“Indians?” LaForge asks, coming closer. “And how did their involvement figure into it?”

“I made them an offer.”

“Ha! Well then I guess we're in your debt, Two-Trees,” the mayor says, but LaForge cuts him off with an anxious wave.

“And what of my men?”

“Same.”

“Dear God,” the woman says, a breathy gasp escaping her lips.

“Speak plain, man,” LaForge says. “Surely a few of my guns survived the encounter.”

“Not a one. You think they would let me ride off with this loot if they had?”

“No, I do not.”

“Bad day all around for white men.”

“Sweet Jesus,” LaForge doubles forward, supports himself with his hands on his thighs. “I will confess, when I saw you ride off with the Pinkertons I had a most uneasy feeling, but I can say with utmost certainty that I did not see
that
coming.”

“His share's not coming out of my end,” Boone says. “Not after all I been through.”

“What
you
been through?” I cannot help myself. In the swirling black night of winter's first blizzard, the Spirits grant me the true and clear vision of a hawk. I see it all—the greed, the lust, the depths of deceit and depravity. Every errant remark, every incongruous little morsel from the last month unfolds like a map on a table. The unfettered words pour out of me. “The plan don't work without you, do it, Boone?”

“What are you jawing at? I say we waste him right now.”

“You had one job and one job only and that was to get every goddamn Pinkerton over to the Bend so them banks would be unguarded. Only two men in the Bend with the power to make that happen—you and Sheriff. And Sheriff was never going to turn. So he had to go. And you bear as much guilt on that as the Snowman. You can add the blood of every last Pinkerton to your head as well. Plus all them what perished along the way.”

“This is rich. I suppose you blame me for your whore's death as well. Though I don't think you'd want anybody poking too close around the sudden departure of Jed Barnes, would you?”

“If they did, they'd see he had it coming. And that I did what any man in his right mind would do. It's when fellas start acting in ways outside themself that draws attention.”

“Anybody else heard enough?” Boone grips the pistol a little tighter and does his best to steady the quivering muscles in his arm. Cold and fear take hold of him in equal measure.