Here by the Bloods (3 page)

The sheriff's bed is just as he left it, made up clean and proper the way a soldier's would be, but devoid of any woman's adornment, like the way Mrs. Pardell would have touched upon it. His leather holster hangs from the post where he always kept it—where I must have slung it a few days ago. I cannot say I remember.

I hitch on the leather and work the buckle tighter than it is used to. The fit is better than I expect and the two Colts hang within easy reach. I catch my reflection in the mirror. A sheriff's guns do not make me a sheriff.

I slide the footlocker from beneath the bed and, opening it, am greeted by the private mementos of an honest man. What I came for lies near the bottom among the other speculating tools from Sheriff's younger days. The coil of slow-burning fuse is old, but dry and usable. The detonator caps lay scattered throughout the locker. Most crumble in my hands, leaving only three, which I fold into my handkerchief. It would be nice to have more. The bighorn looks down on me from above the bed—fake, glass eyes holding me in my own doubt. Not doubt over tracking down some bandits—doubt over what comes after, doubt of ever seeing that ram or this house again.

In the kitchen I load the saddlebag with an extra blanket and canteen. I throw in some hardtack, coffee, a tin of sardines, and a few cans of tomato juice. I wipe the table down and leave it clean. Sheriff would not approve of an estate agent leading prospective buyers through an untidy house. I snuff out the lamp and lock the door behind me.

Storm, the stallion, could run down anybody, but a stallion has a bad day every six months and tonight I cannot risk being thrown. The gelding will do fine.

“Easy, Buster,” I say, touching the gray of his neck. Buster usually responds as I ask and is too dumb to spook. For the second mount, I take the mule, Strawberry, from the paddock and tie her line to the horn of my saddle.

I put it a quarter to midnight when I lead Buster down toward the road, Strawberry following behind, accepting her fate. She is loaded up with every inch of rope I could find, a few feet of leather cord, and the heavy, old slave irons that Sheriff kept in the barn. A cold wind picks up, whipping down from the mountains. A wind and no moon—perfect for where I am headed—but I find little comfort. I button the topcoat to my neck. Down by the gate I see an orange glow flare brightly and then dim as a man exhales smoke into the night. By his shape and the wide, folded brim of his hat I make him to be the mayor. He has been waiting a good while.

“Whoa,” I ease back on Buster and he stops. Boone's chestnut mare snorts, annoyed we have kept her from her barn. “Evening.”

“I thought I might find you heading out,” he says. “I know he was like a father to you, Harlan, but there is no need to play the hero. We will hire the Pinkertons, sure enough. You heard the folks tonight. Trying to get a consensus out of that lot is like trying to draw blood from a stone.”

“I heard a lot of talk 'bout money—'bout what was stole. How much it cost to get it back. I did not hear much about doing what is right.”

“I am sorry, son. Sometimes necessity overshadows justice.” Boone takes a long pull from his smoke. “You know these men will kill you, Harlan. I cannot in good conscience allow you to walk into certain death.”

“Respectfully, sir, your permission I do not need.”

At this he smiles, the whites of his teeth reflecting what scant light there is. “A truth, there. You are your own man, to be sure. What, you are nineteen now?”

“Thereabout.”

“Then as one man to another, is there anything I can do to convince you to leave this to the professionals?”

“Calling someone professional does not make it so.”

“A truth again. In that case . . .” Boone goes to his saddle and comes back with something folded into wax paper. “Betty put up some biscuits and salt pork for you. You will need all the strength you can muster.”

“Obliged,” I say, taking the bundle with a nod of gratitude. “Now, if you will pardon me.”

“Godspeed to you, son.”

“Mr. Mayor.”

There should be four of them. Five men entered the bank. One took it in the blast. Peering though the branches at the camp, I see three lumps beneath the bedrolls. Maybe one is indisposed, off with a shovel somewhere. In this howling wind he would not go far, though. I wait a half hour, watching them—no fourth man has returned. What internal squabbling reduced their numbers by one I cannot say, but the treacherous five miles leading to this inhospitable clearing offered no shortage of possible burial sites for a traitor's corpse.

I fade back from the trees and into darkness, scaling my soft moccasins down over the rocks until I am fifty yards below the camp. There among the loose boulders I clear out a space of bare earth no bigger than my fist. I reach into my coat and fish out the handkerchief now damp with sweat. Maybe the detonators are ruined. Maybe I am free to head back down this craggy slope, pick up Buster and the mule where I have them tied, and get back to my bed before this fool mission leaves me blown apart to feed the coyotes.

But then I remember Sheriff and the voices of fear in the meetinghouse and figure there are worse ways to die. The detonators are dry, as is the slow-fuse, so I will not have to gaze up at that bighorn though the eyes of a coward tonight. Tying a foot of fuse to the first detonator, I lower the cap into the crevice, leaving the tip of the fuse just below the edge. I take my coat off and lay it over the opening and myself like a tent. Protected from the wind, the match lights on the first go, so close to my skin that it sears me. My eyes turn to slits as I struggle to adjust to the flare of sudden brightness. The fuse simmers to life as the flame kisses it. No turning back now.

Still blinded, explosions of red and yellow blossoming beneath my eyelids, I find my way back into my coat and make my way to the right, guided by touch alone. Out here, a busted ankle does the same as a blow to the head. I lead with my fingertips, the rest of me following, one cautious step at a time, until the shapes of the boulders—and finally the stars—return to my vision. I check my progress, some thirty yards, but my line has held true. Not bad for a blind man. I skirt the camp for another twenty yards, then hunker down to do it all over again, only now I shorten the fuse two inches to allow for the time it took me to paw my way over. This time I know to look away when I strike the match.

Two minutes later, the fate of the third and final cap—and perhaps of me—is sealed when an eight-inch bit of slow-fuse takes fire. Now speed matters. Doubling back, I slink among the boulders, their positions burned into my memory by touch and necessity. Just short of the camp I stop, taking a moment to let the air deep into my lungs to calm what is happening inside me. How the bandits are not awoken by the thundering of my heartbeat, only the stars know. Every thump sounds like I am standing at the maw of a copper shaft on blasting day. I say the words in my head.

The words always do the trick. I will not be seen until I want to be. It is what comes afterward of which I am less certain. But I cannot think about that now. I glide up to the spot where I was before, behind the branches. The killers have not moved.
Kill them all. It would be easy. Shoot them in their bedrolls.
No. That is not for me to do. Something cold rests in my grip. I look down. I have chosen my knife, but do not remember drawing it.

BANG! The first cap blows, so much louder than I expect, even through the ripping wind. Loud is good. One of their horses, the palomino, I think, lets loose that horrible screech a horse saves for the few times in its life it is truly terrified. The lumps on the ground shudder and become all at once living, dangerous beings. A boot scrapes. Three men stand. The confusion that momentarily stunned their brains is gone before they reach their feet. I should have known. No night is ever fully restful in their line of work. Professionals, spooked by nothing. Just like that, I am the hunted. Someone cocks a pistol. Another chambers a rifle round. Then silence. The men listen, patient for what clues the night will give. And it will always give something. My knife feels as lethal as a pencil. In a full moon, I would already be dead.

BANG! Their heads snap to the center, focused in one direction. A figure points out the spot where the second cap blew. Another man nods. The third does nothing. If they stay bunched together, my plan, what there is of it, falls apart. Their disciplined silence works against me too. I need to hear his voice. The voice of the Snowman.

“Indians?” says the one farthest from me. He is not the Snowman.

“Maybe,” says the man with the shotgun before dropping to a crouch. He slinks off down the hill in the direction of the second cap, using the boulders as cover. “Psst,” he hisses, “that way.” Following his lead, the one farthest from me dashes off to his left and soon disappears down the scarp.

The third man stands alone before me, a silhouette holding a pistol. PAAAPPP! The blast of the final cap shreds the air behind me, so close I can feel the wave against my back. The man turns, facing right at me.

“This one is mine.” The sheriff's murderer starts to walk straight toward me. I go stone still.
Invisible.
The Snowman comes to a stop three feet from me, peering with a killer's eyes into the darkness just beyond my head. The smell of coffee and whiskey is just like Frank Wallace told it, but there is foulness beneath it, a fetid effluvium of stench and decay. The Snowman stinks. But I do not so much as inhale. His head angles toward me. He stares right at me, yet does not see. I have lived my life this way. A gust of wind rustles the prickly pear to my right. The Snowman's eyes follow it. He takes a single step beyond me and stops again, the back of his head in three-quarter view to me.

I swing my arm. The butt of my knife handle lands true against his skull. The pistol drops to the ground. I kick it down the rocks. A sound comes out of him as he staggers—a low, stunned moan. He doubles over. I grab him by the head and bring my knee up hard into his ribs. He makes a new sound and stumbles to his knees. From behind I throw my left arm around his neck and pull him up against my knife. Even concussed and disoriented, no man mistakes the cold steel of a blade to his throat. His hands go up. With my knee in his back I drive him onto his belly and lay my weight into his spine.

“Okay.”

“Shh,” I bring my mouth near his ear. “Your bounty spends the same dead or alive. Make a sound and I will bleed you out right here.” Before he even thinks about responding, I yank his hands back and get the shackles onto his wrists. As they click into place I pull him back onto his knees. I grab the oily cloth of his mascada and yank it off his neck. I roll it tight, out of his line of vision. “Say you understand,” I whisper.

“I—”

I slip the gag between his teeth, cinching it taut. The knife goes back into its sheath and I come out with one of the pearl-handled Colts. “Now walk.” A shove gets him shuffling, but he stumbles at the first down-step and I have to grip the back of his collar with a stiff arm to hold him up and keep him moving at the same time. He could make trouble. He could run. He could plop down onto his butt and make me have to drag him or kill him. The blow to the head seems to have numbed him and rendered him compliant. I am less worried about him now. It is the other two who will kill me on sight.

We make slow progress down the hill, negotiating the loose boulders with difficulty. My eyes do not leave him. This is the Snowman, the cagiest, most feared outlaw in the territory. I know not if he is playing possum. My ears stay tuned to the surrounding night. I rehearse the motion in my head. There is only one move to be made come trouble and I will have a split second to make it. The wind abates for a few precious seconds and I throw my net of listening as far as it will go.
Ears of a buck.

The faintest click touches my hearing. I stop. It could be—but then the scrape. It is a sound I know, the scrape of a rifle barrel resting on stone, of a shooter
correcting
his aim. In a single motion I yank the Snowman back and camp myself behind him while bringing up the Colt. I squeeze the trigger before I even have him in my sight. The man peers down the barrel at me from behind a boulder, his head and upper torso all I have to work with. I keep squeezing, correcting with every shot until the fourth bullet skims the rock surface and the fifth drops him behind the boulder. “God almighty, son,” groans the Snowman, his body tensed, but far from panicked. Professional. The strain of his muscles has popped the gag from his mouth. A string of profanity erupts from behind the rock.

“Percy! That you?” It is the voice of the third man, checking on his compadres from off in the darkness to the right. I see him now. His shoulders bounce hurriedly toward the fallen man.

“He shot my ear, the damn bastard,” cries the one called Percy from behind the rock. The second man passes behind a boulder. I fix my sight on the spot where his head will emerge on the other side. The brim comes into view and I squeeze. The shot pings off the sandstone, sending the man back behind the rock.

“He get you, Finn?” the Snowman says.

“Nope.”

“Well, he is now holding an empty Colt.”

I drop the empty Colt from my right hand and cross-draw the other from the left side of the holster.

“Like hell I am.” I sound like a kid.

“Never mind,” says the Snowman, disappointed.

I aim at the second man, who has reappeared and has his rifle leveled at me. He says, “You wriggle free, I will put him down for you.” I tighten my grip on the Snowman and shrink down behind him best I can. The Snowman's ribs vibrate as he chuckles.

“I suspect I will take a bullet in that exchange,” he says. “Better you boys follow along where this young 'un aims to take me. You all right, Perce?”

“Yeah. Winged is all. Tell your friend that is bad luck for him.”

“The horses run off,” says Finn.

“Ah. You best round them up, then. Tend to Percy. You know what to do after that.” The Snowman cranes back at me, expels a mouthful of nasty air in my direction. “Your move, young 'un.”

I snatch up the fallen pistol and bring the Snowman close. “I have a mule tied up for you down the way. You can choose to sit atop it, or get dragged back to town by a rope. I am not fussed either way.”