Snake Eyes (9781101552469) (22 page)

“I don't care about that,” Schneck said. “Leave him to the buzzards for all I care. The dumb sonofabitch.”

Wagner said nothing.

He followed Schneck as he rode toward the road. As they left the place where they had found Sweeney's body, they both heard a warning rattle and saw a timber rattler coil up next to a downed tree. Its tongue streaked in and out of his mouth like black lightning with twin forks.

“Kind of early for rattlers,” Wagner said as he circled away from the snake.

Schneck gave him a dirty look.

“I don't want to hear about rattlesnakes,” he said.

Wagner sighed and let it go. Something inside Schneck had changed. He wasn't the same man Wagner had known for the past two years or so. Yet, he seemed determined to find the man who had killed Sweeney. It just seemed as if all the fire had gone out of him, and he was just going through the motions, like a soldier that has killed his first man, lost his mind, and just keeps marching forward, shooting at anything that moves.

Wagner stayed a few yards behind Schneck as they reached the road, and both looked at all the dead bodies of men, horses, women, and children. It was a sickening sight now that he could see the lifeless bodies and remember that they had once been alive and happy, laughing and talking until the gunfire broke out and they began to scream just before they died in a hail of bullets.

He didn't like what he had done. He knew, deep down in his heart, that he would never get over any of it. And now, seeing all the dead, it was worse. The images of before and after were seared in his mind for as long as he lived.

“Let's track them,” Schneck said in that same toneless voice.

“Yes, sir, I'll try,” Wagner said and took the lead. He scanned the ground and sorted out the tracks. He saw where one horse had gone into the woods and returned from where Sweeney had been killed. Then that horse joined up with another and both had ridden into the timber where they would be harder to track.

That took him better than a half hour, while Schneck sat there with his rifle butt resting on his leg, staring up at the windblown clouds and the blue, green, and silver waters of the river crashing down through the long canyon on its rush to the South Platte. He gazed up at the high mountains and seemed impervious to the brisk and gusting wind that coursed down on them like some icebound reminder of winter and an unsettled spring.

“It's going to be slow goin' through them trees,” Wagner said.

“I don't care how long it takes,” Schneck said. “I'm going to kill the man who shot Sweeney.”

“There are two men down here in the timber,” Wagner said.

“I'll kill both of them. One of them is probably that goddamned detective.”

“Probably,” Wagner said. Then, to push the needle deeper into Schneck, he added, “The one they call Sidewinder.”

He saw Schneck stiffen as if he had been knifed in the back, and it gave him a perverse satisfaction for some reason.

“You ain't so damned big, Schneck,” he said to himself. “You're probably just as scared as me about that Sidewinder feller.”

And Wagner was scared. The man they called Sidewinder was an unknown factor in all this sheepherder business. He was a man that Schneck didn't know and couldn't kill so easy as women and kids. He'd bet his bottom dollar that Schneck was scared, too.

He just wouldn't admit it to nobody.

Because, down deep, Schneck was a born killer, and he had no heart. Or, if he did have one, it was made of iron and pumped poison instead of blood.

He was sorry now that he even knew Otto Schneck.

But he did know him. He knew Schneck too damned well.

Vivelda ran as she had never run before, with a flaming ball of terror blazing in her mind, a terror so alien to her that she could not connect any part of it to the real world, the world of childhood and young womanhood that she had known when she was nurtured in the comforting arms of her mother, Imelda Udaberri, and the deep calm voice of her father, Alberto. She had never known a terror such as the one that burned her thoughts to a crisp like crumpled pieces of paper tossed into an open fire.

Reason deserted her as she ran, headlong, through a strange and terrifying wilderness where branches grabbed at her blouse and her skirt like the fingers of skeletons, and stones bruised her bare feet, brush scratched her ankles and legs like the raking claws of feral cats. Every crashing sound of her feet sent new alarms through her brain with the speed and heat of electric energy. She wanted to scream, but her throat was constricted and her brain burning up with the horror of what she had witnessed and could not process. Her mind was filled with the screams of children and the terrified shouts of her friends and the terrible sight of horses falling dead in their traces, men she knew toppling from their horses with blood spurting from their bodies like red wine from a shattered goatskin
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, and the crack of the rifles like the sound of dry bones breaking under the hammer blows of hidden monsters.

She ran and stumbled and fell. She scraped her knees on sharp stones and desiccated branches. She picked herself up and rubbed the fresh red scars on her legs, then careened on, climbing steep terrain and falling into ditches and treacherous depressions in the earth that added to her terror.

She felt sure that men were chasing her. Men with rifles and knives. She could hear them in her mind, their heavy boots smashing downed branches and crushing rocks to powder. She did not look back because that would ignite more fires of that terror that burned all through her, frying her brain, paralyzing her heart, and searing her tired legs so that they ached with muscle cramps that felt like a fist was squeezing them so hard that she was sure they would give out on her and she would fall and never get up.

Sounds and voices faded away, and she ran and tripped in silence. Her chest burned with the agony of a long-distance runner. When she saw the large cairn of rocks ahead of her, jutting out of a short slope, she staggered toward it, breathing hard. There were crevices and crawl spaces among the gray boulders, and she knew she had to rest. And hide.

In the thin air, she was starved for oxygen. Her muscles began to tighten up on her, and she had cramps in both of her calves. Her feet were sore and tender from the hard rocks underfoot.

Vivelda clambered up to the stack of large stones. She bent over and extended her hand to one of the lower ones, bracing herself as she struggled to breathe. It took several minutes before she could breathe normally and without that searing pain in her lungs. She glanced back down the slope to see if anyone had followed her. She was relieved to see no one there. She looked up at the formidable array of rocks. They looked like a stone altar in the shape of a lumpy pyramid, somehow comforting, as if it might be some way station for weary huntsmen in the deep woods. She walked around to the other side and saw a crevice large enough for her to crawl into and rest for a spell.

She stooped down and peered into the dark hole amid the rocks. She looked for animal tracks in the soft earth but saw nothing but dried brown pine needles blown there by a long ago wind. She squatted down and felt the ground inside. It was dry against the palm of her hand. She breathed a sigh of relief and, on hands and knees, crawled inside. The hole was just big enough so that she could turn around and sit if she hunched over and pulled her legs up close to her chest.

She nestled against a rock at her back and sat scrunched up like some woodland creature peering out into the shadowy landscape flocked with pines and spruce, a couple of alder thickets. She could hear the river as it cascaded down the canyon. She rested her head on the tops of her skinned-up knees and closed her eyes for a few seconds. She heard her heart pounding in her chest, and it sounded loud to her, but regular as her breathing had become. The clouds across the river seemed low enough to touch, almost, and they were dark and bulging with stored-up rain.

A few moments later, she heard voices in the distance. She shuddered in fear and pressed against the rock behind her as if to conceal herself even more from anyone who might pass by and look for her in her hiding place.

The voices grew louder as she knew someone was getting closer to where she was hiding. She listened and her heart pumped faster. The fear in her mind flared up and made her tremble as if gripped by a sudden chill. She closed her eyes and prayed to the Holy Mother Mary.

“Don't let them find me and kill me,” she added in the silence of her mind. “Please don't let them find me.”

She stifled a sob as the voices grew still louder. Men's voices. Very close.

Her heart seemed to skip a beat when she saw the legs of the horses, and a half second later, the figures of two men. They seemed to be following her tracks, because they both looked down at the ground as they rode very slowly straight to the place where she had climbed up to the rocky cairn.

Then, she heard one of them call her name.

“Vivelda. It's me, Brad Storm. You're safe now.”

She saw the man who had spoken and recognized him. It was Brad, but who was the man with him? Was he one of those who had shot her friends and killed them? She had never seen that man before. He was leading a horse behind him, a horse with an empty saddle. So she didn't move.

She watched as Brad dismounted and walked toward her. She whimpered as she saw him looking at the ground and circling the pile of rocks. He stopped in front of the opening and bent over.

“Vivelda, are you in there?” he asked.

She whimpered but could not speak.

“It's all right. The man with me is a friend and he is going to take you back to Mikel.”

Brad held out his hand.

“I can't see you,” he said, “but I know you're in there. Come on out. We have a horse for you to ride. You'll be safe with this man. He will take you back up to the valley where Mikel and Joe will take care of you.”

She squealed and crawled out of the hole. She scrambled on her hands and knees to where Brad stood hunched over and reached out to him with her left hand. He grasped it and pulled her to her feet. Then he drew her to him and enfolded her in his arms.

He patted the back of her head as she sobbed uncontrollably against the warmth of his chest, the rough hide of the buckskin.

“There, there,” he said softly. “You're going to be all right. You will be safe from those bad men.”

“Oh, Brad,” she sobbed, “I am so happy to see you.”

Then she laughed hysterically as he led her by the hand down to the horses.

“Vivelda, this is Thor. He works for me. You can trust him. Can you ride?”

She nodded dumbly and looked up at Sorenson.

“I—I can ride,” she said.

Brad helped her into the saddle of the horse next to Sorenson. He adjusted the stirrup straps as he poked her left foot into one of them. Then he walked around to the other side and worked the straps until she could rest her foot on the rung. She looked down at him in gratitude.

“You'll be home in no time,” he said.

“Am I—am I the only one?”

“Yes,” Brad said. “I'm so sorry. I'll get the men who did that.”

Then he looked up at Sorenson. “Thor, take her home.”

“I will,” Sorenson said. “Just follow me, little lady. I'll hold on to the reins. You just hold on to that saddle horn.”

Vivelda nodded, and fresh tears streamed down from her eyes onto her cheeks. She grabbed the saddle horn with both hands, and Thor clucked to his horse and tapped his spurs into its flanks.

Brad waved to them as they rode off, back up the canyon, along the road that bordered the Poudre. Soon, the two were out of sight, and he let out a long breath of relief.

He led Ginger up behind the jumble of rocks and kept going until he found a small clearing that was concealed by some junipers, spruces, and several pines. He ground-tied his horse to a low sturdy young juniper. He dug into a saddlebag and grabbed a box of .30-caliber cartridges and a handful of double-ought shot shells. He pulled his rifle from its scabbard, walked around, and slipped the shotgun off his saddle horn. He walked back down the slope and climbed the backside of the rocks. He sat there on the top rock with a pine tree at his back. The rock was large enough so that he could lay the shotgun down. He leaned against the tree and jacked a cartridge into the firing chamber of the Winchester.

He looked down at the road, which was some distance away. Then he marked the place where he and Sorenson had stopped. If anyone was following them, that was where they would end up, at that spot where Vivelda had climbed up the slope and found her hiding place.

He wasn't sure that Schneck and Wagner would follow Vivelda's tracks, overlaid with his and Sorenson's horseshoe impressions, but if they did come along, he was ready for them.