A Good Man (62 page)

All along the way, at every moment of hesitation or indecision as to which way she must take, Ada discovers more signposts revealed in the light of the swaying lamps. On she goes, the cutter rocking and slithering along the trail, the snow thrown up by the horses’ hooves pelting the dashboard with soft thumps, as she hunts for another of dear Joe’s messages written on the snow.

Rounding a thicket, McMullen is greeted by a strange light flickering above the brow of a hill. The location roughly corresponds to where the girl had marked the cabin on her map. It puzzles him. Such a big fire don’t fit with nobody who wants to keep his whereabouts quiet, he thi. A lure for a ambush, a snare of some description? And then another possibility hits him. Has that bastard Dunne put a torch to the cabin to burn it down around the body inside?

The thought is like a kick to the gut. A hot rush of acid climbs his gullet, scorches his throat, and settles in his mouth. He leans over and spits the sourness out. His head hanging, his back bowed, he feels the soreness and stiffness from the beating he took lodged in his muscles. “Too blamed creaky for this,” he says aloud, and then the squeak of runners, the faint jingle of trace chains, the muffled thud of hooves pushes that thought out of his head. Backing his horse into the trees, he draws his revolver and waits for whatever is coming.

A sleigh sweeps round the bend, the team’s heads swinging. Joe heels his roan to block the path. The horses shy, the cutter slides to a stop. Faced with a pistol, Ada cries, “Joe! It’s me!”

McMullen peers hard into the glare of the cutter’s lamps, then lowers the barrel of his gun to the ground. “Goddamn that young fool! Why didn’t he stop you! I’ll break him to pieces!”

Ada keeps her voice reasonable and level. “How did you imagine you would transport Wesley? We will need the cutter to get him back to Helena. Don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t. Not at all.”

“The law is on their way by now. Let us sit tight.”

“Waiting ain’t a help – it’s a hindrance. Look,” he says, pointing to the glow in the sky. “You see that? It’s those that took Wesley. Hard by, where I have a chance to strike them. But what the hell am I supposed to do with you?”

There is a snap in the distance. Then more, one after another, quick cracks like the flick of a bullwhip. The sound of a pistol firing.

Joe wheels his mount, goes pounding up the slope where the fire beckons with a palsied forefinger of light. Ada spills out of the cutter, chases after him, reticule clutched in her hand.

A steady, insistent whistling causes Case to open his eyes in a place he does not recognize. He has been abandoned; the chair in which Ada should be sitting is empty. Pulling himself up, he looks for the source of that annoying, high-pitched whine, and finds it, a kettle jetting steam on the stove. Then his eyes fall on bloody footprints tracked across the floor.

He remembers a hand stroking his brow with a cool cloth. Not Ada but Michael Dunne. Collecting his breath, his wits, the little vigour he has, he swings his legs out of bed and fumbles for the floor with his feet. When he stands he sees another bed, the sheets stained scarlet.

Dunne is moving delicately, gingerly through the bulrushes, careful not to brush up against them and excite their whispering. The hushed, insinuating voices of stalks and dry leaves say the same scornful, dismissive things that have been said about him all his life. Is te day coming when the birds will sing against him? When he lies in the coffin, will the earth rub its salt in his wounds?

Stepping out of the bulrushes, he sees a horse and rider circling the fire. The screen of gauzy snow obscures the horseman’s features but he surmises it can be nobody else but McMullen. Indignation swells up in Dunne. They come at you from all sides, like a pack of dogs. Turn one over on its back with your boot and here is another one snarling and snapping at you.

McMullen’s gaze is fixed on the cabin. Dunne starts shucking empty cartridge cases from the long-barrelled Schofield, replacing them with new rounds. The revolver loaded, he draws his Wells Fargo Schofield detective special from its silk sleeve sewn inside his coat. A piece in both hands, he marches forward.

Out of the corner of his eye, McMullen detects movement on his left, a dark blob moving through the light snow that has begun to fall, and he shifts his red roan around to face it. There’s no mistaking Dunne, a tub on legs, trundling towards him like an outraged landowner ready to run a trespasser off his property. Joe sidesteps his horse out of the light of the fire and spurs it at Dunne. The roan makes two skittish jumps before she breaks into a gallop. McMullen means to turn Dunne, put him to flight, run him down. It’s a cool man who’ll stand firm against a horse bearing down on him full speed. But Dunne is holding his ground, his arms up at shoulder height as if he means to embrace the charge. There’s nothing to do but go directly at him, knock him over, trample him, kill him on the ground.

Four flashes, four reports. Joe feels his horse plunge downward as if she has gone headlong over a cliff. The sky jerks out of sight and a smear of white rushes up and smashes into him; something breaks loose deep inside him, filling his mouth with blood. The weight of the dying horse pins him to the ground. He can see its head rising and falling, hears a bubbling snort coming from its nostrils.

“Get your feet under you, girl. Come on, come on,” Joe encourages her. If he can get her to try to rise he might be able to tug his leg loose. A broken bone is grinding in his thigh, flashing pain up his spine. Jarred out of his hand by the fall, his revolver glistens several feet out of reach. The horse makes an effort to rise, then quivers like a plucked string and goes absolutely still. Suddenly Dunne is looming over him, wearing the hazy, perplexed look of a man with too many things on his mind.

McMullen says to him, “I reckon this is better than dying behind a plough. I only wish if someone has to send me over it would be a better man than you, you black-hearted son of a bitch.”

“Every time I turn around, people coming at me, meaning to do me harm. If it ain’t that, they’re pestering me, Do this for me, Mr. Dunne, do that. Why’s everybody want something from me?” He looks to be directing his words towards the cabin. “Sick people ought to have more sense than to leave their beds,” Dunne says petulantly. “Now I got to put him back where he belongs.” He trudges away from McMullen.

Joe raises himself up on an elbow to see Wesley clinging to the doorframe of the cabin, Dunne headed towards him.

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Breathless from the long run up the hill, the sound of the four shots stammering panic in her ears, Ada halts by the fire. The first thing her eyes fall upon is a dark hump resembling earth heaped on a newly dug grave; she sees it is Joe’s horse, and rushes over, drops down by McMullen’s side. With strangled vehemence he says, “Go for the cutter, girl. Fast as your legs can carry you.”

“Joe –”

He gestures. “Dunne. He’ll be back. Get out of here.”

She lifts her eyes and sees square shoulders moving towards a stick figure teetering in a golden doorway, Wesley so feeble he can scarcely stand. Plunging her hand in her purse, she rises and starts numbly after Dunne, hears Joe calling out to her, “No, Ada! No!”

“Mr. Dunne! Mr. Dunne, wait!” she cries.

Dunne stops dead in his tracks. His head swivels back over a shoulder and peers intently at her. Ada sees Wesley waving to her, hears him calling out in a hoarse, choked voice, “Go back! Go back!” Joe is yelling to her too. Their warnings gusting about in her head, she lowers her eyes, walks on, watching the clean white snow that passes under her feet.

At first Dunne doesn’t trust the sound of Mrs. Tarr’s voice coming out of the ether, calling his name. But then he sees her head and shoulders surrounded by a multitude of bright white flecks, swarming, the swirl and billow of her skirts. The glow on a silvered plate, an image captured in an instant, is turned to flesh and blood. And it
is
Mrs. Tarr’s voice that has asked him to wait, not the flat, characterless voice that haunted him before, a voice without qualities; there is no doubting it is her voice, coloured with kindness and goodness.