Through Darkest America-Extended Version (26 page)

Howie looked at the terrible face. "I had to know, Pardo. They . . .
Harlie
said you was taken. I had to know if you was alive. I promised myself that." He stopped a minute. It was hard to look at the man and make the words come. "It was . . . for Cory, Pardo. I come to kill you. Like I said I would."

It seemed a useless, empty thing to say. But he made himself say it. The eyes stared up at him a long moment.

Then the head tried to nod understanding. The effort, though, was too great. The mouth-thing started working again, dark teeth looking hideous and unearthly without lips to cover them. It was costing Pardo everything he had to talk. Pain spread over the awful face and rippled in a great wave down the ruined body. Howie brought his face close to hear.

"
Do it … boy.
. ."

Howie jerked up and stared at him. Understanding came and he shook his head angrily. "
No!
No,
godamn
you, I ain't
goin
' to
give
you that, Pardo. Not me!"

No, he told himself flatly. I won't. It's too late for that. Cory had to hurt. And
Harlie
. And everyone else who's touched him. Everyone's hurt but Pardo.

"It's your turn, now," he said aloud, "and by God it's a long time coming!"

The eyes pleaded with him.

"No!"

The mouth twisted pain into words again.

"No," Howie cried, "I
won't
, Pardo. You can just quit asking!" His eyes filled with hot, angry tears. He could hardly see anymore.

"You got no right," he said. "You don't, Pardo."

The eyes refused to let him alone. They reached out, holding him.

Howie forced a laugh through his tears. "You can just hurt, 'cause I sure ain't
goin
' to help. I'm . . . not,
Pardo
."

He felt the bone-handled knife in his fist. It burned, like there was fire in it.. His arm was heavy as iron. He remembered the first time he'd seen the knife in the window of the store in
Bluevale
, and how Papa had said if the meat sold good maybe there'd be enough for the knife, and some sweet sugar candy . . . .

"Well, now."

Howie straightened, blinked back his tears. The bright torch blinded him a moment. Then he saw the gaunt face above yellow light, the thin smile. He knew the face. He blinked again. Roundtree. The skinny man in the alley in Roundtree.

The man's eyes moved down and fell on the knife. The smile faded. "That, was a bad thing to do, Howie. We wasn't through with him."

Howie wondered if he could make it out the rear of the tent before the man shot him, and decided he couldn't. He was too tired to try, anyway. Then he saw the smaller figure behind the man, outside the tent. Slim, with a wide mouth and Kari's curious eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

H
is name was Lewis, or so he'd told Howie. He didn't wear a uniform, just plain clothes like anyone, but you could tell he was important by the way the guards treated him.

Howie didn't look at him. He gazed past the man across the empty room to the window with the thick wooden bars. It was a bright, clear day outside. White clouds sailed by like big, lazy beasts and he could hear people talking and moving about in the busy street below. If he got up and went to the window he could look down and see them; merchants hurrying from one place to another, women going to market, and soldiers—plenty of soldiers. Beyond were the high walls of the city where swarms of workers labored all the day, and at night under torchlight. And past that, far on the horizon, the dim blue shadow of the mountains.

The skinny man smiled at him and blinked watery eyes. "Sure a
nice
day, ain't' it? Reckon a boy like you'd enjoy being out there
takin
' in the sunshine. Maybe squiring a pretty girl 'round or something."

Howie looked at him curiously. "Well that ain't real likely, is it?"

Lewis shrugged. "Now you don't know that."

"
Uhuh
."

"Things can happen," Lewis assured him. "They sure can?'

Howie laughed out loud. "I figured that's why you
brung
me here," he said dryly, "so you could round up all them pretty girls. That's it, ain't it?"

Lewis looked pained and disappointed. "Howie, Howie . . .” He shook his head and let a shallow breath through his lips. "Remember what I told you back in Roundtree? How you had friends and didn't know it? How they could help, if you wanted them to? That still goes, Howie."

Lewis was perched on the only piece of furniture in the room, a three-legged stool. He'd brought it with him and Howie figured he would take it with him when he left. They sure weren't leaving him anything he could tear up, or get his hands around.

"Why you reckon I'd believe that?" said Howie. "You lied to me about knowing Cory. You never even
seen
Cory."

Lewis looked thoughtful a moment. "All right. That's true enough. I didn't know him, but I knew all about him, didn't I? I knew about Cory, and what happened to him, and I'm dead right in saying Pardo killed him—and everyone else who wasn't in on that deal with him. Is that true or ain't it?"

"Sure," Howie shrugged. "I reckon it is." And what difference did it make, he wondered? The whole business was over and done with. Talking about it wasn't going to bring Cory back. And they sure weren't going to hang Pardo for it.

"You see?" said Lewis. He held his hands open wide. "Answering questions ain't all that hard. I'm an easy man to get along with. You don't have to be scared or nothing, Howie."

"I ain't," Howie lied.

Lewis grinned and winked at him. "Well, you
might
be. Just a little. Couldn't blame you for that. But you sure don't have to be. Howie, we know a lot more about Pardo's business than you think we do. We know that he promised to see that meat through, and how he sold us out to the Rebels. We even know how he did it—
gettin
' everybody all worked up and scared over false rumors 'bout the Rebels coming down from the north, or up from the south and all. 'Course he planned all along to lead the herd right to the Rebels, before we could get there. And we know
somethin
' else, too." He pointed a long finger at Howie. "We know you wasn't in on any of that. You didn't have no use for Pardo, and we know that, too. You was just
doin
' what you had to do." He sat back and folded his arms and gave Howie a secret grin. "We even know you tried to kill him . . . took out after him with your knife, when you found what he'd done to your friend Cory."

Howie didn't say anything. Lewis leaned forward. "You see? That's what I been
tryin
' to get across, boy. That we ain't after
you
for nothing. There's just things we want to check on . . . kind of
tyin
' up loose ends and all. You got no reason not to talk about what's over and done with, do you? There ain't nobody it's
goin
' to
hurt
, is there?"

"Don't reckon there is," said Howie, trying to sound like he meant it.

The skinny man was good at what he did. After listening to him awhile you caught yourself almost believing he was your friend, and didn't mean any harm, and sure didn't want you to say anything that'd get you in trouble.

Howie knew better. And he was certain Lewis was aware of that. If he'd really known everything about Pardo's operation, like he said he did, he wouldn't be wasting time talking about it. He wanted something, and figured Howie could tell him. What, though? If the man was as smart as he seemed to be, wouldn't he know Howie was about the last person
Pardo'd
tell his secrets to?

He even told that to Lewis. Lewis just smiled and said they knew that and didn't expect him to have that kind of information. Like he'd said, they were just checking. They really already knew everything they needed to about Pardo.

When he left, he took the stool with him, and said they'd be talking again soon. Howie wasn't sure of too much anymore, but he was certain that was so.

It was a four-day ride from the mesa to the city. No one spoke to him the whole time. He didn't see the skinny man. Or Kari. He had plenty of time to wonder, though, what Kari was doing there—alive and well, with nearly everyone else in the column dead and gone. The more he thought . about it, the worse he felt. Finally, he tried to put her out of his mind. She was alive, and he was glad of that. He wasn't sure he wanted to know much more.

He didn't know the name of the city and no one told him. They put him in the bare room and left him, and gave him water and a little food—not so much, though, that he wasn't always hungry.

He kept count. No one came to see him for eight days. It was peculiar, he thought, but that scared him more than anything. No one was hurting him, or bothering him at all. But every night he figured they'd come for him in the morning. He couldn't forget what they'd done to Pardo.

Every day was worse than the one before, until finally it was hard to keep from banging his fists against the door or tearing at the heavy bars on his window.

No! He decided. That's what they
wanted
him to do and he wouldn't give them the pleasure. Only it was a lot easier to say it than do it. To really keep the fear inside.

 
Finally, he even stopped looking out the window. Nothing out there belonged to him anymore. There was only the room. It had a gray, dread finality about it. Like he had come there to stay.

He almost cried openly when the skinny man came to see him. Whatever happened was better than waiting for it. Even if they killed him, or did something terrible to him, it would be over sometime. He'd know.

He tried not to show the man his fears, but he knew, all right. Why, that's why they'd left him here—so he could
get
good and scared! The thought made him angry and the anger made him feel a lot better. They could only get to him if he let them, he decided.

 
Only, that wasn't so, and he knew it. All you had to do was remember Pardo.

Lewis waited three days after his first visit. Just long enough, Howie decided, to let him worry a little.

This time he wanted to talk about Pardo himself: what he was like, what he did, what he said about this and that. He asked Howie where he'd come across Pardo and how he'd gotten mixed up with him. Howie told him, figuring there was no reason not to. He told about getting caught by Klu and Jigger, but didn't mention Old Chattanooga or the river.

"And before that," asked Lewis, casually enough to bring Howie fully alert, "what in the world was you
doin
' out wandering around in the wilderness?"

Careful, Howie told himself. Careful now…

"I ran away from home."

"I see," said Lewis. "And whereabouts was that?" He shook his head and showed his palms to Howie. "It don't matter, if you don't want to say."

"No, it's okay," said Howie. "It's down south. On a farm. Only I didn't want to be no farmer."

Lewis grinned sympathetically. "Don't much blame you. Where down south? Near a town or anything?"

Howie tried to think of some of the places Aimie had mentioned, but couldn't. "There wasn't much of anything around there. '
Cept
Harlie
. It's a little
ol
' place. Maybe 'bout a hundred people."

"
Harlie
."

"
Uhuh
."

"And your folks is farmers."

"They raise a little stock, too."

"And their name is . . . what? I don't think you ever said."

Howie felt the knot tighten up in his belly. Did they know? The soldiers had known about him at the river, when he'd first joined the meat herd with Pardo. But that was way back east, right after it happened. Did Lewis know about him? Was he just pretending that he didn't?
Bluevale
was a long way off. But a story like that, what he'd done to Jacob. . .

It was a moment he'd dreaded for a long time. He had put it carefully aside, in the back of his head somewhere, hoping maybe it wouldn't come. Now, he silently cursed himself for growing careless and using his real name in Roundtree. He'd thought the world was a lot bigger than it was—that a man could just disappear if he was halfway across the whole country. It came to him, suddenly, that if Lewis already knew who he was, his
first
name would be enough to hang him. He wouldn't even need the rest!

"It's
Kover
," he-said, remembering a neighbor near Papa's farm. "My father's name is Joseph, and my mother's is Kate."

"No brothers or sisters," said Lewis.

"Just me," Howie said evenly.

Lewis made a note, and if his expression changed at all, Howie didn't catch it. He allowed himself a small breath of relief.

The questions went back to Pardo. What had Howie done for Pardo in Roundtree? Exactly how had they put the gun shipment together for the Rebels? Lewis had him name the places in Roundtree where the weapons had been put together. He had a list in his hand and checked things off on it, but Howie had no way of knowing whether anything was really on it.