Outlaw Hell (9 page)

He closed his eyes, as his Apache ears listened for footsteps, or the click of a hammer. Floating before him in the darkness was the sallow death mask of Amos Twilby intoning solemnly over and again: “. . .
yer a grown man, and you got a right to hear the truth.
” Through the depths of a warm Texas night, Twilby's solemn chant rippled across Duane's soul.

D
UANE AWOKE BEFORE DAWN, HOLDING
his gun ready to fire. Then he looked out the window at the first red sliver of sun peeking over distant mountains. It reminded him of when he'd dwelled among the Apaches, hunted wild animals, drank
tiswin
, and had incredible visions concerning his grandfather.

Duane wished he could be back with the Apaches, living a pure life close to nature, but warriors were always returning from raids wearing Mexican and American clothing and carrying rifles, ammunition, and other booty that they'd stolen. Their entire culture was on the dodge, and it was only a matter of time before the Army hunted them down.

Duane craved a normal life with home-cooked
meals and honest ranch work. He'd loved his brief stint as a cowboy, but then he'd shot Otis Puckett, and his life had turned upside down ever since. When would the madness end? he often wondered.

He found the washbasin, splashed water onto his face, and made his way toward the undertaker's house, as Twilby's chant continued to ring in his brain. “
Yer a grown man, and got the right to hear the truth.
” The undertaker lived on the east side of town in an adobe house, with window frames trimmed in white. Duane knocked on the door, and the tall, severe-looking trafficker in corpses opened it. His eyes widened at the sight of the Pecos Kid.

“I'm here for the funeral,” announced Duane.

Snodgras led him to a back room, where a plain wooden coffin contained the late Amos Twilby. The undertaker had bathed and shaved the corpse, dressed him in a suit, dyed his mustache, and powdered his nose. Duane was revolted by the transformation of his friend. Will I look like that when they bury me? Duane wondered.

“Have you spoken with the parson yet?” asked the undertaker.

“I'll see him at the cemetery.”

“Reverend Berclair doesn't work that way. He'll have to palaver with you first, to make sure you're a good Christian. He takes his job seriously. He's not in it for the money.”

Duane noticed four other corpses lying on tables nearby. One was Jones, the owlhoot in the brown hat whom Duane had shot in the Last Chance Saloon.
Second was the owlhoot wearing the green shirt, and the next corpse was the one with the pointy nose, both of whom Duane had outgunned in the street the previous night. Duane turned toward the fourth corpse, and his eyes dilated at the sight of the owl-hoot with the silver-star belt buckle, whom Duane had thought got away! “What happened to him?”

“Bled to death. He was found behind a stack of firewood with a bullet in his leg.”

So I got him after all, thought Duane, as previous conclusions flipped in his mind. “Wait a minute,” Duane said. “If a man gets shot in the leg like this, how long before he loses enough blood to conk out?”

“The bullet severed his popliteal artery. I'd say fifteen minutes to a half hour.” Then the undertaker smiled proudly. “I studied to be a doctor before I became an undertaker.”

Duane was struck by a disturbing new thought. If this outlaw died fifteen minutes after I shot him, then who tried to blow me to bits while I was asleep behind the Last Chance Saloon? A chill came over Duane. Is somebody who I don't even know trying to kill me?

Apocalypse Church was a white house with desert swallows flitting about the steeple and belfry. Duane had never been in a Protestant church. Most Texans were Protestants, whereas Mexicans attended the Catholic churches. He glanced behind him, to
see if a bushwhacker with a shotgun was lurking in an alley.

The inside of the church was plain white, with no statues of saints, no candles burning, and no Jesus on the bare cross suspended behind the altar. A young woman prayed in the front pew, her shoulders bent in supplication before the Lord. Whoever she is, she really believes, Duane thought. He headed for the door that led to the parson's office, and the young woman's head spun around in alarm.

“Didn't mean to scare you,” he said. “I was looking for the Reverend Berclair.”

She was a frail-looking, pale-complexioned teenaged girl with black hair pulled to a ponytail behind her head, and she wore a gingham dress with a high collar. “Through there,” she replied, pointing toward a door.

Duane opened it. An older woman appeared in the corridor, her features austere, and she was dressed in black. “May I help you, sir?”

“I want to see Reverend Herbert Berclair about a funeral. My name's Duane Braddock.”

She made an uncertain smile. “Everybody's talking about you, Mister Braddock. I'm the parson's wife, Patricia Berclair. Right this way.”

As she led him to a small parlor, he noticed she was in her mid-thirties, and was tall and angular. “Make yourself comfortable. I'll get my husband.”

She headed for the door, and he decided that he liked the holy lady. He sat on an upholstered chair and
looked at a small bare cross affixed to the wall above the fireplace. Above the cross was a sign: He Is Risen.

Duane felt out of place in the parson's home, because Protestants generally hated Catholics, and vice versa. He'd studied the Reformation at the monastery in the clouds, and countless warring Protestant sects had confused him. Duane didn't know what was right or wrong in religion anymore, but tried to keep an open mind. He expected a pale preacher with an elongated beak to appear, but instead a big strapping fellow approximately six feet four inches tall strode into the room. He had curly dark blond hair, a deep chest, a ruddy complexion, and advanced on a shiny walnut pegleg.

“I'm Parson Berclair!” declared the booming voice. He grasped Duane's hand firmly. “Pleased to meet you.”

Duane squeezed with all his might to prevent his knuckles from being crushed. “Mister Snodgras said you wanted to see me about the Twilby funeral,” Duane said.

“Are you a Christian?”

“Definitely.”

Parson Berclair fixed Duane in his stare. “I mean a real Christian who tries to live the gospel, not just pay lip service. If I'm going to bury your friend today, I expect a prayerful experience for all concerned, in which we relive together the passion of Christ and his resurrection into heaven.”

“Wouldn't want it any other way,” Duane replied.

Reverend Berclair beamed. “I've always believed that the best way to prepare for a funeral is to bare our hearts to God, ask for forgiveness, and pray for the soul of our recently departed. Most people in Escondido are outlaws, and perhaps you are too. But God loves repentant sinners most of all. Why don't you go to the chapel, and I'll call when we're ready to depart for the cemetery?”

The chapel was filled with slanting shafts of morning light that illuminated pews. Duane sat, looked at the bare cross and walls, and felt strangely bereft without the statues, symbols, and paintings of the Catholic Church. The Protestants didn't have anything except God Himself, he realized. It was an interesting concept, but he preferred Giotto and Titian to drab walls. He dropped to his knees, clasped his hands, and tried to pray.

Nothing happened, and he felt unworthy to appear before the Lord God. The plain fact was he'd broken every rule in the book since leaving the monastery in the clouds. Unable to turn the other cheek, he found himself drawn back to a more primitive biblical theme: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. He knew it was barbaric, but also recognized that he was weak and couldn't ignore the murder of his father, the loss of his mother, and now, most recently, the killing of Amos Twilby and the subsequent attempt on his own life.

If Twilby had stayed away from me, he'd still be alive today, Duane surmised. Twilby stuck his neck out for Joe Braddock's son, and a snake in the grass
shot him. Murder and robbery are taking over the world, while good people turn their cheeks. Didn't Christ throw the money changers out of the temple precincts?

On top of everything else, as if he didn't have enough worries, somebody had tried to blast him to pieces as he slept behind the Last Chance Saloon last night. Duane couldn't imagine who the bushwhacker was, and wondered when he'd strike again.

The back door of the church opened, and Duane's slender fingers darted toward his gun. He heard the laughter of five children chasing each other up and down the aisles. A stout woman accompanied them, and Duane arose from his pew as she approached.

“Sorry to bother you, sir, but this is the onliest place where the little ‘uns can play during the day. You're new in town, ain't y'all?”

“Just arrived yesterday,” Duane replied.

“The children cain't go outside,” she explained.

“There's so many guns in Escondido, you'd think there was a war on.”

She smiled apologetically, then waddled to a back pew and sat where she could watch the children. Duane returned to his knees on the floor and considered what she'd said. How can children grow normally if they're pushed indoors all the time?

Their screams pierced his ears, disturbed his prayer, and provoked his hostility against the outlaws who'd taken over Escondido. They have no respect for anybody, not even women and little children.
Who the hell do they think they are? It's time somebody took charge of this town.

Now hold on, he admonished himself. Don't get carried away. You're just one ex-cowboy with a price on his head. You can't save this town, and if Jesus Himself came back to earth, even He couldn't save Escondido.

Duane heard a deep voice emanate from the front of the church. “It's time.”

Duane followed the Reverend Berclair to the parlor, where his wife was waiting, attired in her black dress, black lace collar, and black bonnet that contrasted sharply with her milky white complexion. They proceeded outside. The undertaker sat on the front seat of the buckboard. A planked wooden coffin lay in back. Duane knew who slept eternally inside, covered with cosmetic powder, wearing a new suit. The undertaker flicked his reins, and the horses pulled the wagon toward the cemetery.

Duane walked beside Reverend and Mrs. Berclair and the clanking buckboard. “The deceased was a close friend?” asked Reverend Berclair.

“Actually, we'd just met,” Duane said. “But he was a good man, and didn't deserve to get bushwhacked.”

“Remember the words of Paul the Apostle.
Even if you are angry, you must not sin. Never let the sun set on your anger, or you will give the devil a foothold.
”

“Nobody's shooting at me and getting away with it,” Duane replied darkly. “That's all I know.”

Reverend Berclair glanced at him. “You're on the road to hell, my boy.”

“Am I supposed to look the other way and let him do it?”

“Why does somebody want to kill you?”

“I think it has something to do with my father. You ever heard of Joe Braddock?”

The preacher shook his head. “Should I?”

“He was killed in a feud with some rich ranchers near the Pecos some years back.”

“I've never spent much time in the Pecos country, I'm afraid. My wife and I arrived in Texas only recently from Alabama. We felt that God was calling us to this sinful land, isn't that so, Patricia?”

She nodded solemnly. Duane glanced at her out the corner of his eyes, and thought she might be pretty if she gained some weight. “Escondido sure is sinful,” Duane said, picking up the conversation. “I never saw so many hard hombres in one spot in my life.”

“It's an uphill battle, but I believe in persistence and the healing power of God. I've
seen
Him, you see.”

“What'd He look like?” Duane asked.

The preacher appeared not to notice the skeptical note in Duane's question. “It happened a long time ago, during the war, at Vicksburg,” he replied, and his face seemed to glow with the memory. “Cannonballs were falling, canister raked our lines, the ground was covered with dead and wounded, and behind it all, high in the sky, I saw the face of
the Lord God gazing at me, an expression of indescribable compassion on his face. I literally cried for joy, but then a chunk of flying metal hit me in the leg. It was the end of the war for me, but the message was irrefutable. God directed me to take up His ministry, and simultaneously made it impossible to do otherwise. So I mustered out, went to divinity school, and here I am in Escondido.”

Maggie O'Day stepped outdoors, accompanied by Bradley Metzger, and the bright morning sunlight nearly blinded her. She was a creature of the night, usually fast asleep in the early hours, but there was something she wanted to do. Duane Braddock's story had touched her, for she'd been a semi-orphan too, and had often wondered about her father. She suspected that news of Duane's mother might be available among the older women of Escondido.