Pale Horse Coming (47 page)

T
HE
two Irishmen had gotten in close. They crouched together under the legs of one of the machine-gun towers. Twenty feet above them, two unknowing guards shifted, spat, drank coffee from thermoses, groused quietly about the endless boredom of the duty, and one even pissed off the platform with a groan.

Then the shots rang out from the Store and the Whipping House. They just started up, a staccato of gunfire, rolling over the fields that separated the two. Audie and Jack heard some scuttling about up top, and one voice said to the other, “What the goddamn hell is that?”

Audie lifted his black German attack rifle, as it was called. He had no hesitations whatsoever, for all hesitations had been ground mercilessly out off him that day in Italy when his friend Lattie Tipton had been gunned down. He fired the whole long, curved clip, and above them, the slugs poured through the floorboards, ripping and splintering as they went, the noise shattering the sleepy silence of the night.

For an old man, Jack moved swiftly. He got into the tower and didn’t pause to look at the two freshly killed men. He’d killed a lot of animals in his time, and death held few fascinations for him. Now it was time to shoot.

He swiftly unslung his Model 70 and brought it to his shoulder, his finger flicking the safety off even as his hand guided the stock into the pocket of the shoulder, his knees and feet found a solid kneeling rested position with the forearm of the rifle resting pool-cue-like in the relaxed splay of his left hand on the ledge of the guard tower. His right index finger ran to the curve of the trigger, knowing it so well, so familiarly, and rested firm against it, feeling the slack just go out of it.

It was dim through the Lyman 4X Alaskan scope, but Jack had no problem finding the guard tower one hundred yards across the way from them, over the roof of the Ape House. He made out the silhouette of a moving man and a searchlight came on in that same moment. He squeezed carefully, and had the hunter’s deepest pleasure of knowing that his shot had scored. He quickly threw the bolt, ejecting the used shell, lifting another .270 into the chamber, found the second target and put him down.

“Got ’em both, old man,” screamed Audie.

Jack shifted fast; the third tower was also one hundred yards away, and quickly enough he found a target there, fired and was rewarded with a cry. He hunted for a second, found none, rotated to the last tower but was too late.

Next to him, Audie fired a long burst with his attack rifle. From the distance, Jack watched the slugs eat the place up. They danced over it, sparking oddly here and there, raising a spew of dust and wood chips. The hot shells rained on Jack, but he was salty enough to ignore the discomfort—pain, even, when one got down his shirt collar and burned the flesh of his shoulder—as he hunted. He saw nothing.

He went back to the tower where he’d only hit one man, and sure enough the second was halfway down the ladder. Jack nailed him good, though he wobbled a few feet on shaky legs before he sat down and collapsed.

“You are a hell of a shot, Mr. O’Brian,” said Audie.

“I have shot an animal or two in my time,” said Jack.

“Now as I understand it, you’re to stay here till them other fellows arrive and cover for them when they move through to free them coloreds.”

“That’s it. I will hunt for targets as they come available.”

“I believe I am to head over into them lean-tos and shanties outside the wire. That’s where them women and old men live. I’ll be getting them out of here.”

“You take that big fast-firing gun.”

“Well, sir, I am plumb out of ammunition for it and I can’t get no other. I had sixty and I done shot ’em all. Now it’s time for Colt work.”

“Don’t take your cowboy gunfighting style too seriously, Audie. This isn’t the movies.”

“Well, sir, it isn’t, but it sure seems like one.”

With a pixie smile on his small and pretty face, America’s most decorated hero slipped out of the tower. He had a town to tame.

A
UDIE
strolled the dark street. He was an apparition in gun-hawk black, from his black hat to his tight black neckerchief to his black shirt to his black pants to his black double gun belt. Only the two Colts, each tied with a thong to the leg, were not black; they were nickel-finished, polished up nice, not a night-fighter’s guns at all. But they had their advantages. The great Hollywood gun coach Arvo Ojala had honed and stoned their actions, so they were slick as hog guts. He’d rewelded the hammers on each, so they pronged upward another inch and were smooth there, the point being to draw the palm of the off hand along the top of the rising revolver while holding the trigger back so that no lockage was possible, and the hammer just reached apogee and fell of its own accord. Fanning, it was called, and it was much favored by movie gunfighters. You couldn’t get work if you couldn’t fan, and fanning took a year to master, for you had to build that callused toughness into the edge of the palm, and you had to build the muscles of the wrist and forearm. Most movie cowboys practiced with blanks, so accuracy wasn’t an issue. Audie, Texas-born and war-hard, saw no point in blanks; conceptually the blank made no sense to him. So he shot to hit with live .45s, and by this time was among the two or three fastest gunmen in the world. He had made himself into a different kind of killer than the boy who had thrown grenades and shot men down with carbine, Thompson and Garand; he was the Kid now, not much older than the famous Kid of 1884, Johnson County, New Mexico.

In ’ho-town, four men had gathered. They had enjoyed pleasures accessible to them by right of skin color and the guns they carried. This was no mission of rape; it was simply the way it was at Thebes, and one reason why only the best guards of the Mississippi penal system came to Thebes; its ’ho-town, and the relaxations available, were legendary.

These four were neither braver nor more cowardly than their brethren, most of whom were already dead, the rest of whom had crawled nekkid into the trees; they simply happened to be the ones who were there, and they had gathered at one end of the street in the lee of a shanty as the gunfire and flames had risen all around them. They essentially had no idea what to do: Should they go back or should they flee?

Having no ideas, they did what men in such circumstances will always do: nothing.

They sat and waited to see what would develop.

What developed was a cowboy in black strolling down the street.

“Will ya look at that?” said one. “He stepped out of the picture show.”

“He’s a little ’un.”

“Them guns he’s carrying ain’t so little.”

“If I had a rifle I’d shoot him and we’d ride on.”

“You don’t have no rifle. You got yourself a revolver like him, and unless you can shoot it well a hundred yards in the dark, you are going to have to get through him to get your cracker ass out of this place.”

“I say we run out shootin’, and sure enough one of our bullets will clip that feller.”

“Yes, sir, but suppose he don’t panic, suppose he shoots as good as he looks, and suppose you’re so nervous you can’t hit nothing. Then what?”

“Let him pass, shoot him from behind.”

“That be a good idea.”

“It be, but can you absolutely still your breathing and the noise as he passes by? Suppose he hears you? He turns and comes. Then what?”

“What’re you saying, Vonnie?”

“I am saying the onliest sure way is to get close up and face this bastard. He can’t take all of us. He just can’t. No, sir. We four, he one, that is what it be. We have our guns out. But we have to be so close it ain’t about aiming, it’s about speed. You got a better plan?”

Nobody did.

And so it came to happen that Audie saw them slough into the street. They had guns in their hands, sleeves rolled up, hats pulled low. A director would have handled it differently, and better. For one thing, he’d have lit the scene more vividly, as the odd flicker of a lamp from the close-by shanties didn’t bring enough texture out; and for another, he wouldn’t have let them carry their guns, because that violated the code of the movie West. They wouldn’t be clean-shaven, and their hats would have more character. He’d also have insisted on better dialogue, for even Audie sensed the banality of the exchange.

“You go on, git out of here, Mister. This ain’t your place. You got no business here.”

Audie, a fighter not a writer, could do no better.

“This is my business. This is my
best
business.”

“You one. We four. You put them guns down, boy, or you will be dog dead in the dust in two seconds.”

“So will you.”

“You ain’t got no cards to play.”

At that point, one of the men fell dead. He dropped like a stone, a small geyser of blood pulsing from the side of his head, which had been crushed by one of Jack O’Brian’s .270s fired from almost a third of a mile away.

“Odds are a little better now,” said Audie, whose best thing as both actor and real-life gunfighter was that in moments of high stress a little smile played across his tight lips and his not terribly expressive eyes came abloom in twinkle. So this was the best line, and the best delivery, of his career.

From the three guards, the three guns came up, on the practical impulse that standing in the middle of the ’ho-town street was no longer a risk-free opportunity, and the faster this was handled the better it would be for all of them.

They moved first, and it is practically true that in such encounters aggression pays dividends; nobody can catch up with a fired gun.

Audie, therefore, could not catch up; however, the shots that came at him missed, not by much, but by enough—a tenth of an inch being “enough”—because the shooters were not practiced at the art of instinctive close-range shooting and didn’t realize that unless you’ve disciplined your trigger finger to come straight back, as if on a pivot, its yank will invariably misdirect the first shot; it comes then to correcting quickly.

That’s the quickly they lacked.

Audie drew and fanned so fast his shots sounded like a burst from the German attack rifle. He scored three hits in less than a second, and two were fatals; two men went down, a .45 Colt not being something a man can argue with. The third was gut shot and the big slug hit no bones. He was dead but would not die for another ten or so minutes, and he got his gun on Audie and would have finished the trick but for Jack’s finest shot of the night, which hit him in the neck, a split second before Audie recovered and fanned two more, heart and lung, into him, and knocked him askew for all time.

Then it was over.

Gun smoke hung in the air, and dust, too, from the fall of the four.

Again the movies: slowly doors opened and women and kids and old men came out. They’d all seen it, but they knew nothing about Jack. It was just that the stranger in black had gunned four of the hated guards down in the street in but a second, after a dramatic exchange of words.

“Who you be, sir?” an elder finally asked.

“We come in from the river, folks,” said Audie. “We come in to serve this place some justice. You see the flames lighting the sky? We’re burning it out. So y’all have to clear out and find other lives. In the morning all this is gonna be under water.”

“I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.”

“I am, sir. Texas born and raised. Proud of it. Y’all take your belongings now. Have courage. Be bold. This part of your life is over.”

“Sir, they won’t nevuh let us leave. We owes ’em all money, so we have to stay. The Man work that way.”

“Ain’t no more Man. Them debts, that’s them burning. All your debts are burned to ash. You get what few get, and that is a new start in life. I’d grab it hard, for there ain’t nothing here for you or nobody tomorrow.”

And with that, the cowboy faded into the dark, a dream, a wish, a myth, but above all a man with a gun.

T
HE
world exploded on Jack O’Brian. It just lit up. Suddenly he seemed in a wooden coffin while men shot the bejesus out of the thing, and as the bullets whipped into and through it, they yanked out shards of jagged wood, old chunks of nail and shingle, broken wire, bits of lead and jacketing and a sleet lashed at him.

Jack slid down into the corner as the storm continued. He was aware that somewhere in the region of his lower left-hand chest, a numbness was spreading, though he had no memory of being hit. His hand flew to the spot, encountered something wet and dark and pulled back.

Aw, hell, he thought.

The firing stopped. Jack lay still. Smoke and dust filled the air. He was expecting to die, but death took its time. Oddly, he was not outraged at the world, for as he looked back upon his life, he saw that it had been a good one. Over six hundred game animals taken, the shots all good and true, on six of the seven continents. On top of that his wife loved him and he loved her, and following the advice of various wealthy sponsors, he’d invested wisely; no worries there.

And he’d killed men, now, finally, after all these years, including a great shot on a fellow through a window in the Whipping House. That was a shot to remember. Then the shots on Audie’s antagonists.

“He is fixed good,” he heard someone mutter below him.

“We got that goddamn jackal but sure. You go on up and git that .30-cal., Ferris.”

“You go, Nathan. He may not be dead.”

“He is dead,” said Nathan. “Plum-jack dead, I tell you.”

Jack’s numb fingers stole to the huge New Service he carried. He pulled it from its holster, amazed at how big it was. It was a big old thing. He knew if he cocked it, the click would set these boys to shooting him up some more, so he just lay quiet, feeling the slight tremble as somebody placed his weight on the ladder and began the climb up to the tower.

A head appeared in the floor hatchway, pivoted as it sought information, revealing a face and a set of eyes that blinked when they encountered the muzzle of Jack’s revolver not three inches away.

The muzzle flash blinded Jack as he sent a bullet the size of a robin’s egg into the face: the flash was vast and fired up the night. He did not see the effect, but heard, through the ringing in his ears, a loose thump of body striking ground in complete repose. Someone else scurried away.

“He is still alive, boys. Give it to hi—”

But the shots that followed came not from the sound of that voice but from elsewhere, and Jack recognized the boom of Elmer’s .44s and Charlie’s .38 and Bill’s .357.

“Jack, you all right?”

“Hit pretty bad, goddammit.”

“You stay put,” came the call from Sally. “I will be right up to you.”

“Sally, there may be more of them boys.”

“These old farts down here will take care of them.”

The shooting rang afresh, but no rounds came through the wood. Sally was up to him in seconds.

“I’m a goner,” he said.

“Only if you believe that, sir,” said Sally.

She pulled his shirt open and saw him plugged cleanly; a through shot had taken out some lung tissue and opened a lot of veins.

“I believe your poor old wife ain’t shuck of you yet,” Sally said. “You will be along for many a year to cuss and complain of her.”

“My wife is a fine lady,” he said.

“Well, whatever, she deserves something more than an old gizzard like you.”

“That is certainly true,” he said.

“How is he?” Elmer called up.

“He’s lost blood and will be abed for a month, but if we can get him out of here and to the raft on some way other than his own two legs, he’ll be around for years to come.”

“I was afraid of that,” said Elmer.

“Damn you, Elmer Kaye,” called Jack.

“And the same to you, sir.”

Sally put two gauze pads on Jack’s entry and exit wounds, then wrapped him tight with yards of linen bandage, running the material up and around his shoulder, tightening one arm to his side. Then Elmer climbed up, and so did Charlie, and between the two of them they got Jack down the ladder and set him against a tree.

“You done some good up there, Jack,” said Elmer.

“I think I did hit a few,” said Jack.

“Where’s Audie?”

“Fool kid was off in ’ho-town playing the marshal. He’s got guts, but he’s big shy on brains.”

“Hey, I heard that.” It was Audie, rejoining from his gunfighter’s foray.

“Jack’s been hit,” said Sally. “But he is too ornery to die.”

“Son, you are plumb crazy walking down the middle of the street like that.”

“I wanted to see if it could work. It works fine as long as Uncle Jack is up top running backup with a bolt gun and a scope. Jack, you don’t look so good.”

“I am fine, son. Though I am now wrapped so tight my ears might explode.”

Then Earl arrived, and he was not happy.

“What the hell are y’all doing? Sitting here yapping as if in the bar over some beer. Jesus Christ, don’t you old bastards have a lick of sense among you?”

“Earl, Jack’s hit.”

“Oh, shit. Jack, how are you?”

He coughed up a little spray of blood, then wiped it off his mouth dismissively with the back of his hand.

“I am fine. No big thing. A lot of blood is all. I’ve seen plenty of blood before.”

“He can’t walk.”

“Okay, let’s clear these buildings and rig a stretcher and get him back to the town.”

“That’ll work.”

“Jack, you stay here.”

“Earl, thought I’d go to my dancing lesson, it’s all the same to you,” Jack said.

“You are a tough old goat, I will say. Now listen up, y’all. This ain’t over yet, and it still ain’t no goddamn tea party. We got a sweep to do, and there’s still a very dangerous man about who might still get his people together.”

“Ain’t no people to be got together, Earl. Them we ain’t dropped done fled.”

“Hell, I’ll go ahead and kill what’s left, you say the word, Earl,” said Charlie. “I’m having a grand old picnic and don’t want it to end.”

Earl saw that this banter could go on forever if he didn’t stop it hard.

“Okay, now. This here’s the last damn thing. We open the gate, sweep the compound, knock open the prison barracks, and step aside as them black fellows run free. Then we burn what’s left.”

“Suppose you got old men who don’t want to leave. Old men can be peculiar stubborn like that.”

“Then you make the younger boys take charge. That’s the only way. Come on now, we have to get humping. We can’t be powwowing like this, no matter what fun it is. Next thing you know, Charlie’ll be passing the jug out.”

“Didn’t bring a jug, Earl. Got me a nice flask, though. Care for a tot of bourbon and lemonade?”

“Afterward, flying home.”

“Be all gone by that time,” said Charlie.

“Earl,” cried Jack, “you watch that fool kid, Audie. He wants to get himself killed.”

“Aww, I do not.”

“You stay under discipline, junior. That’s an order. Rest of you old coots, you listen here. This ain’t no movie. You move slow, in the shadows, in a line abreast. You keep in visual contact. You shoot what moves, and ask about it later. You stay down as low as possible, move from cover to cover. Y’all ought to know that. Sally, you stay here with Jack.”

“The hell I will. Jack don’t need me. Maybe some of them old black men do.”

“You won’t do one thing I say, will you?”

“Not a single one, no, sir.”

“Well, can you fire a flare pistol?”

“I suppose.”

“Then let’s get some illumination and finish this thing and get the hell out of here.”

Sally took the flare pistol from Jack’s pouch, and, being practically minded, solved its intricacies quick enough.

“See, honey, you—” Charlie began to explain, but she raised the pistol and fired, the soft pop detonating a few hundred feet up, and ever so slowly, dangling from its parachute, a white flare floated down, drifting and swinging pendulum-style, so that the shadows it created danced eerily across the terrain.

“Come on, people,” said Earl.

T
HE
gunmen moved easily through the buildings. They could sense eyes from the locked buildings hard-pressing against them, but they were looking for men with guns, not men with eyes.

Charlie, whose senses were still keenest, saw something move and blasted a Blue Whistler at it. So salty were these boys that exactly what a young Marine platoon would have done, these fellows did not, which is open up with a panicked fusillade.

“I think you just kilt a rain barrel, Charlie.”

“Was a moving target, goddammit.”

“Charlie’d shoot anything that moved.”

“Don’t kill me, Charlie, for I am moving.”

“Keep it down,” said Earl.

Where was Bigboy?

Had he missed him? Had he lit out? Had he fled at the first sign of gunfire? And what about Section Boss, with his Thompson submachine gun he loved so well? On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t Section Boss’s cup of tea to stand and fight, even with a powerful weapon. With that gun and some luck, he could have done some damage and rallied his own men, but those that weren’t dead appeared to be scattered off in the trees by this time, or crawling naked in that direction.

Sally fired another flare, and it began its gentle drift to earth.

But no guards emerged to fight or surrender.

“I think it’s clear. Them boys didn’t want to fight a bit,” said Elmer.

“Okay, let’s get these damned things opened and get these boys out of here. Then we got to blow the levee, and we’re finished.”

E
ARL
kicked in the door of the Ape House.

Lanterns had been lit. He stepped into a cone of yellow light just inside the door, and it all came flooding back: the stench of men living close in terrible quarters, with buckets for latrines, the bunks and cots everywhere, old-sweat-soaked clothes hung out to dry, mildew, woe somehow baked into the ancient wood of the place, the iron gratings on the windows, the smell of old leather from old work boots much cured with blood and perspiration, the sense of density, hopelessness, despair. It was the last place on earth any man would go in a right mind.

But this time he wasn’t wearing chains, and he wasn’t planned as meat for the strong. He was himself again: Marine-proud and armed, a strong man who was in command.

His presence was greeted with silence.

Then a bell-clear voice called, “You is a ghost. You be dead.”

“Well, then somebody forgot to tell me, because here I am.”

“What is this? What you doing?”

“This is deliverance. Y’all, I come back to burn this goddamn place, and in the bargain you git your freedom. It’s eighteen sixty-five, boys, only I ain’t got no forty acres and a mule for you. Only a dark road into town, and off you go to whatever happens next, good or bad. Meanwhile, we’ll blow the levee, and come two hours, this place is under twenty foot of dark water. Now you go on, git!”

“Is you from Our Lord Jesus?”

“I doubt an angel would have the notches on his gun I lay claim to. I am a gunman. I am a gunfighter. Now go on, git, before old Bogart changes his goddamn mind because he is sick and tired of yapping.”

They seemed not to be happy, not really. It wasn’t like a liberation, for perhaps the word “free” had no meaning, and perhaps as well the shock of a Bogart back in the flesh stretched their minds and made no sense.

But someone had to ask.

“You ride in on the pale horse?”

“Son, I
am
that pale horse. And I am done come back as I swore to old man Fish I would. Now, goddammit, get out of here, get your asses going!”

They filed by, carrying nothing, for there was nothing to carry. One by one they filed past, and Earl recognized most, Tangle Eye and Jefferson and Corner Man and James and Willis and Samuel and George P. and George M. and Vonzell and Jacob and on and on; and last of all, somehow, that contingent of sick and injured, whatever would become of them. Earl almost had pity, for what lay ahead would be hardest on them. They jabbered to themselves, or they moved slowly with fused spines, or they seemed dazed. Some would not make it, but that was the way things happened; he had to paint his violence with a broad brush, knowing that in the particulars it would be occasionally cruel.

“Go on,” he said, “into town. There’ll be rafts of some sort there, I have been told. Whether the State of Mississippi comes looking for you or not, I can’t say. I will say all the records with your names on them have been burned to nothing. That, and I can give you a couple days head start and hope you don’t kill no folks nor rob none neither. Go on, git. You Grandpa, you go on, this is for you, too.”

That was the eldest, and Sally came to him, spoke soft words, and got him mobile. She commandeered two fellows to march with him on the way down that dark road.

Earl watched as the men of the Ape House joined up with the human torrent that had been released from the other barracks and headed off toward the town of Thebes, leaving the penal farm behind forever, not that much of it remained unburned. For as they left, one by one, the barracks went aflame, bursting with cowboy firebombs that lit them from within. The orange glow roared flickery and hot up the sky, burying the stars in illumination, and lighting the parade as the boys went out.

But Earl knew his building was not empty.

With a lantern he walked on back, until at last he found him.

Moon, once so magnificent a warrior, the king of Thebes, had been whipped so hard his lacerations had scarred up. He was a ragged man, with no part of him untouched by the cat’s tail. His face a mask of tatters, like a doll ripped up by feral dogs or cats, it now showed not manhood and aggression but fear. He was weeping.

“You come to kill Moon, Bogart? G’wan, kill me. Shoot Moon dead. He ain’t good for nothing no more. The whip man done took his soul.”

“Moon, you git out of here. You git your soul back in the world. It sure ain’t in here. Whip man will win, you stay here. Killing you don’t matter a damn to me. Go on, so I can burn this place once and for all.”