Shotgun Charlie (14 page)

Ace rounded a corner in the trail, a narrow twisting thing that had become more treacherous the closer he drew to the mountains. And there before him, on the edge of a boulder, sat Grady Haskell. “Well, I never . . . ,” said the perturbed man.

“That's right, you never did, and you never will,” said Haskell, toying with the ends of his leather reins, slapping them on his trouser leg, a grin cracking his stubbled face.

“Didn't expect to see you again.” Ace regarded the man.

Haskell looked up, squinting and cracking a smile. “Hello, Ace. Been waiting on you.”

“How's that?” said Ace, cupping a grimy hand to his right ear. “I'm afraid I didn't catch that, since all that gunfire back in Bakersfield near about ruined my hearing. Not to mention the screaming and crying and howling.”

Haskell slid down off the rock face, dusted his palms against his legs. “Now, Ace,” he said, strolling over. “What gave you the notion that you wouldn't never see me again?”

Ace sighed, climbed down from his horse to face the man. He flexed his jaw muscles, then spoke. “Nothing but the way you up and left us not far from town. Shouted something about how we should stick to the trail, that you'd meet up with us.”

“And ain't I come through on everything I promised you so far?”

Ace shook his head. “Not hardly, Grady.”

Haskell shied back as if he'd been slapped. “Now, what's that supposed to mean, Ace, old boy? I am heartily offended, I don't mind telling you.”

“Then why did you up and leave us? You know we didn't really know the way to the rendezvous point. You said so yourself after you give us such sketchy directions that it would be best if we all stuck together. That way we could get to your hidey-hole and divvy up the money, then all be on our ways.”

Haskell rubbed his chin, squinted. “Now that you mention it, I did say all that, didn't I? Hmm. Could be I was overly proud of my abilities to get us there.”

“Well?” said Ace, poking his hat brim back off his forehead. Despite the cool of the day, standing in the sun he was beginning to feel a little heated up. Or maybe it was that he was finally seeing Haskell for what Pap and Big Charlie had seen in him. And he didn't like the notion one bit. He'd always prided himself on being a little swifter than the average fellow. But the hard truth was dawning, and it pained him.

Haskell stepped in close. “Well what, Ace?” His voice was a low, gravelly thing, his eyes suddenly more snaky than they had seemed before.

Ace couldn't let Haskell wear him down. “Well . . .” He swallowed. “Where are the other boys? You catch up with them yet?”

“Oh, the others?” said Haskell. “Nah, not yet.” Still he stood scarcely two hand lengths away, his voice lower and measured. “You got a message you want me to give them for you?”

Ace swallowed again. “No . . . no need. I'll ride along with you.”

Grady shook his head slowly, his eyes locked on Ace's.

“No?”

Grady still shook his head. Ace did not notice that while he was being mesmerized by the killer's snaky eyes, with a move born of practiced ease, Haskell slid free a long, thin-bladed boning knife from its slit sheath along the outside seam of his trousers. It was positioned in such a way, its hilt hidden beneath his larger skinning knife's wide sheath, that most folks who met him never saw it. Certainly Ace hadn't noticed it. And that was a mistake.

The knife punctured, fast and slick as you please, through his wool outer coat, through his ratty wool vest, through his flannel shirt and long-handle undershirt, through the soft walnut-colored skin of his slightly pooched belly, and angled upward beneath his ribs. And then Ace noticed that he could no longer speak, but only for a moment before the hot flashing pain flowered upward from the deep-sunk blade.

He tried to speak, but a warm, wet feeling bubbled up inside him, filled his gorge, and a gout of blood burst from his mouth.

“What's that? Huh?” Haskell leaned closer, ground the blade deeper. “You got to speak up, Ace, old boy. I know you can talk 'cause you just got through wasting a whole bunch of words about how I didn't do this, didn't do that.”

Ace's eyes widened, blood flowed down his chin, along his shirt, vest, and coat. Behind him his horse fidgeted, nickering, and worked itself wide, the reins slipping from Ace's weakening grip.

“Oh, I see,” said, Grady. “You want to know where I been. Well, that's mighty thoughtful of you. You see, I had no intention of sharing any of that bank loot with you or the boys or anyone else. And there ain't going to be anyone to save you, Ace. You're a goner. Any minute now, matter of fact. And Pap? He's gone too. And Mex? Yep, I reckon you didn't see all that that I did, seeing as how I was last to leave Bakersfield.”

Ace's eyes widened impossibly then, as if what he'd heard shocked him. He was beginning to feel the clouding of death overcome him.

“No?” said Haskell. “Not enough of an explanation for you to chew on, eh?” He spun Ace around as if they were dancing, one hand on the sagging man's shoulder. Just before Ace's legs gave out, Haskell leaned him back on the same boulder he'd been sitting on moments before.

“There, now, ain't that better? Now, where was I? Oh yes, you see, when I left you all on the trail and told you to head on without me, that I'd catch up. I wasn't lying, you see. I was telling the gospel truth. Aw, forget all about that now. Fact is, here I am.” He leaned close to Ace's face, touched nose tips, and said, “Nothing to say? Well, that makes for a nice change.”

He backed away, pushed the dying man's chest when Ace leaned fully flat against the rock, slid the long boning knife out slowly. A slow wheeze, undercut with a grating, bubbling sound, leaked out of Ace's mouth. His eyes glazed as tears welled and then drained like tiny mountain streams, from the outer corners of his eyes. His chest slowed rising, falling. It rose once, held, then released and rose no more.

Grady Haskell stood back, hands bunched on his hips, one hand covered in gore as if it wore a scarlet glove, the boning knife still held tight in his fist. He looked for all the world as if he were admiring a work of art he had wrought.

Behind him a horse uttered nervous, throaty sounds and stepped farther away. That wrested Haskell from his reverie. He turned, saw it was Ace's mount. “Not so fast, horse. You're carrying what I need.”

He hastily dragged the knife blade along Ace's lifeless pant leg, both sides of the blade. He wiped his bloody hand on the other leg, then slipped the knife into its accustomed spot as he strode to the horse, snatched the reins before the already tired beast could bolt. Then walked it to his own horse, which had stayed put, perhaps because it was used to his activities.

Grady mounted up, glanced once back at the dead man. “You know, Ace, old boy, you really ought to think twice before you commence to blaming a body for only doing what he'd intended to do in the first place.”

Grady smiled, booted the horse into a trot, and said, “And besides, I kept my promise. I come back for you. Like I said I would.” As he rode on up the trail, over his shoulder he said, “Now I'm off to find your friends. Keep my promises.” His wry chuckle unwound and carried off on the stiff, building early-winter breeze.

“I guess we'll be doing what I say all right.” Deputy Randy Scoville had batted away the doctor's hand for the third time.

“But, Randy, you and the other men are in no condition to go back out there.” Doc Slattery reached for the muslin wrap he'd split and tied off tight along the young firebrand's nicked upper arm, but thought better of it. The deputy was testy at the best of times, but today he was really worked up—and for good reason. One of his best chums, a man in the posse he himself had organized, had been laid low by the killers.

The deputy spun on him, rising out of the chair in the midst of the doc's bloody rag-strewn surgery. “Doc, I know you mean well, and I know you were good friends with my Grampy and Paw too, but I don't try to tell you how to doctor on a man, so you shouldn't tell me how to be a lawman.”

Doc Slattery suppressed a smirk. Then he thought better of ignoring the comment and turned on the deputy, who was shrugging back into his shirt.

“You young whelp!” He smacked Scoville with a soiled implement. “You think because you wear a tin star and walk around like dung doesn't stick to your boots that that makes you a lawman? Marshal Wickham has more gumption, tenacity, veracity, and law-abiding spirit than you will ever discover in all your days. And this debacle that happened in our town proves it.”

Scoville's eyes blazed. “You dare to blame what happened to the bank on me? I been trying to run down the varmints who done it!”

The doc opened his mouth, closed it and shook his head, then spun on the boy again. “You go back out there and you're sure as shootin' signing a death warrant on yet more people of Bakersfield! And who'll have to patch them up? Me, that's who. Now get gone out of my office. I have plenty to do without tongue-lashing the likes of you . . . you whelp!”

Scoville, standing hipshot at the door, regarded the old surly doctor coolly. “I reckon I'll work up another posse if I want to. Ain't nobody else man enough to do the job.”

Before Doc Slattery could respond, the red-eared deputy whipped open the door, strode out, and slammed it behind him.

“Good riddance,” said the doc, drawing a bottle out of his medicinals cabinet and pouring himself two fingers of amber whiskey. He figured he'd earned it, had gone without sleep for a full day's cycle, doctoring the wounded and tending the wrecked bodies of the dead. His assistants had all dropped away to various rooms to grab a few hours of rest.

He knocked back half the glass, carried the glass to the window, and parted the curtains. Down below, in the street, the lightly wounded deputy looked up and down the street, eagle-eyed, no doubt, thought Doc Slattery, scanning the citizens of Bakersfield who might be unlucky enough to be out. If they were men, the doc knew that Scoville would press them, through guilt or force, into service on the next ill-fated posse.

Doc let the curtain fall, turned from the window, and shook his head. He had to hand it to Scoville, he had his own brand of tenacity. Misguided and ultimately dangerous, but he had that fire it took to roar raging into battle. Doc had seen it in the war and though, more often than not, it cost the holders of the fire their lives, he doubted that battles—posse track-downs included—could be successful without such men.

“Good luck, boy,” said Doc. “You're going to need it.” He downed the rest of the drink and set to work tidying the office before the next inevitable wave of victims was carried in.

The cold of earlier that day had waned, as Charlie expected it would. But he knew that it wouldn't be long before Old Man Winter invited himself to town for a lengthy visit. And when he arrived, anywhere near mountains, even those Charlie hadn't personally visited, there was bound to be trouble. Water got hard, walking grew tough, skin froze, eyeballs puckered, and game didn't move around as much as it did in the warmer weather. What all that meant to Charlie as he surveyed the trail before him was that he was ill prepared for cold weather up in the high places, the peaks of which looked whiter with every step forward Nub and he took.

Charlie's gut growled again, loud enough that the horse nickered. “I know it, I know it. I wish you had some brilliant idea about how I can fetch down meat, as I don't have much in the way of time or tools to go after it right now.” But if he didn't spend the time doing it now, he would likely become so weak from lack of food that he'd wish he'd spent the time snaring a rabbit. Exploring the contents of his nearly empty gear bag a few hours before had turned up a neatly wrapped paper parcel of jerked meat, venison, if he had to guess. He didn't much care. He'd tucked into it and devoured nearly half of it before it dawned on him that this was all he'd be getting in the way of food for some time to come. He'd chewed slowly what was in his mouth, sucking the meat and savoring the salty, peppery juices, then reluctantly swallowed it down.

It hadn't been much, but it had been darn tasty. And he was grateful to the old lawman for it. He'd wrapped the rest of it carefully back up in the paper, brown and wrinkled, then slipped it back into the bag, tucked behind what few spare articles of clothing he had. He hoped that would make it more difficult for him to get at.

Charlie could be a tough individual when he needed to be, but he was weak as water when it came to food. If he was hungry, he was a surly bear. And unfortunately for him, he was hungry most of the time. He was also big. And it took a whole lot of food for him to feel filled up.

His gut grumbled like a grizz cub again and he groaned, nudged the horse forward. They'd found a decent mountain stream that looked to be one branch from a larger river farther up. There he refilled the glass flask he'd been given by the old lawman, as well as his own old water bottle. He'd also been able to lie on his belly and wash his face in the stream, slowly, carefully so he wouldn't open up and set to bleeding again any cuts and scrapes he'd received at the hands of the townsfolk.

Oddly enough, the trail cut narrow at times, and wound steeper along a boulder-lined route that looked as if it had been formed in ancient times when there was nothing but God's critters roaming the place. Maybe it had been cut through by a mighty river, the very bottom of which he was riding through right then and there. He looked up, saw wide, tree-stippled stony chasms rising above him far to each side, imagined the place filled with a roiling green mass of water. And the fish! What sort of finned critters would be in a river like that? The thought made him shudder him, then gave him an idea.

He had an old steel fishhook in his bag somewhere; he was sure of it. All he had to do was rig it up to some sort of line . . . and then Charlie stopped that train of thought as suddenly as if it had been felled by a bullet. Nub saw it too—up ahead along the narrow, curving trail defined by a series of tumbled boulders that had all but concealed the route. They paused on the close side of the nearest of them, a massive pink-and-white outcropping overlying boulders and rubble.

And there, a dozen yards up-trail, appeared to be a man laid out on a rock's warm face as if he were in the midst of a cool-weather nap. But something about this scene didn't sit right with Charlie. Nor with Nub. The horse fidgeted and nickered. A sure sign that he was bothered by something.

A horse's instinct is not something to be trifled with, Pap had told Charlie. And though Charlie knew a whole lot about animals in general, from cows to mules to chickens, sheep, goats, the sage and earned horse sense advice Pap doled out so freely had rung true during the time he spent with Nub.

“Easy, boy, easy,” Charlie soothed the horse, who'd begun to back up. Charlie held him in place, not wanting to emerge from around the big rock mass himself. Then he smelled it. A subtle shift in the cool-day breeze drifted a tangy, sickly stink to him—a thread of it, but Charlie knew what it was. The aging rankness of blood and death. As if a favorite dish had been left out in the sun, gone off.

He tugged his long-handle shirt collar up over his nose, held it there, and peered closer at the scene. No horse, nothing but a man wearing dark clothes, laid out on a dark blanket. He peered tighter, narrowed his eyes, squinted, leaned over the saddle horn, as if another few inches would make the difference in what he was seeing. But it confirmed what he'd suspected. That was no blanket. The man had bled out. Maybe gut-shot, or gut-cut? Didn't much matter now. For despite the cool temperatures Charlie saw a haze lifting and settling with the breeze. Flies, a cloud of them, feasting on the congealing mess that had been a man.

And there were only a few men he knew who could have come up this way so close ahead of him. Had to be one of the boys. Which one? He knew Mex was dead. Maybe one of the others had been hit on the way out of town and when he died the rest left him here?

No honor among thieves, wasn't that what Pap had said? He'd laughed about it in a shamefaced way, aware that Charlie didn't much agree or like the way they conducted themselves. All that seemed so long ago and so innocent compared with what they had done in Bakersfield. And seeing one of the boys dead made it even more difficult.

He hoped it wasn't Haskell, for he wanted to bleed the man out himself. Charlie looked behind himself again, as had become his adopted custom since making his hasty departure from town. He knew the hellhound posse was behind him somewhere, but how far back and how many of them, he had no idea.

For all he knew, the marshal had somehow warned them off. But for what reason? No time, no time to think on that now, Charlie, he chastised himself. Find out who this was, how he died, and if there's anything you can learn, then get going. He nudged Nub to work him forward, but the horse wouldn't go.

“Fine,” rasped Charlie, sliding out of the saddle. “But don't think you're not coming along. It's bound to happen. I ain't about to lose this argument.” He tugged the reins and led the reluctant horse down the path. “Come on, now.” He gave up trying to hold the shirt collar up over his nose. The smell wasn't so bad—the breeze had shifted. But the flies were not a welcome sight. And neither was seeing the man's face, a mask of pain stretched wide, misshaping his features.

Charlie led the dancing Nub wide as he could around the dead man, lashed the reins around a jag of branch busted low some time ago, no doubt by a trail traveler. “Stay put, you. I don't fancy walking the rest of this trip.”

He looked down, saw who the dead man was. “Oh, Ace. Blast them, they didn't even close your eyes for you.” Charlie reached a trembling hand, backed off, and tugged the shirt up again, then with twitchy fingertips tried to close Ace's eyes. It wouldn't work. He tired it a second, then a third time. Nothing.

“Dang, Ace. I am sorry, but you're going to have to stare awhile longer. I'll find something to cover your face with.”

As he'd reached for Ace's face, he nudged the laid-back man and found he was stiff as a plank. There was nothing like the feeling of a dead person. Nothing at all in the world, Charlie thought. There was that softness of the clothes, but even they were different, not right. And the skin of the dead, soft on the very outside, but that was all.

The rest, the underneath, was firmed up, already on its way to doing whatever it was that needed doing. And now here was another. And someday he'd end up the same way too. But not for a little while yet, he hoped. Not until . . .

Charlie couldn't bring himself to inspect the body closer, but there was, or had been, a whole lot of blood, mostly on the front of the man. It had trailed down along his legs, down the rock on which he lay back, and finally in a sticky puddle at his feet.

There was a single line of alternating tracks, small like those of a tiny dog, hill coyote, most likely, leading away from it, one foot having touched the blood. The critter had likely worked up the nerve to inspect and when he'd gotten close had not liked what it had come up against. Charlie felt the same way.

He went back to the horse, rummaged in his bags until he found the cloth sack the marshal's food had come in. “It ain't much, Ace, but it'll have to do. He laid it over the man's eyes. Then turned, stopped with his back to the dead man.

“Dang it all, I can't leave you. No matter what you did, no man deserves to be left out here, picked over by buzzards and other such critters.” Charlie was surprised, in fact, that there hadn't been sign of buzzards. Usually they had a keen sense of death, knew when it was coming and sometimes didn't wait. Maybe the cold temperatures had prevented the stink from building. Come to think on it, the man didn't smell all that bad yet. Had to be the cold, and the fact that he'd probably not been dead all that long.

Charlie looked back at the dead man. Sure he was angry with him, angry with the whole lot of them. Even, if he admitted it, with Pap, and most of all with himself for not putting up more of a fight when it came to that foul Grady Haskell. But that didn't mean he could leave the man there, baking on the rock, varmint bait. But he had no shovel, no way to dig a grave, and most of all, he had no time. He glanced at his back trail once again. Nobody.

He looked at Ace. The dead man hadn't moved. “Well, at least I'm safe with you, Ace.” Charlie sighed and looked around for a solution. His eyes rested on a gap between two boulders, trailside, deep enough to wedge a man, if he was sitting upright. Charlie reckoned he could pile rocks over him, stuff them atop the boulders to fill in any holes. That would have to be good enough. It wouldn't prevent the most determined of critters, but it would have to do.

It took longer than Charlie had anticipated, mostly because he had to work extra hard to wedge Ace into the space, as he'd stiffened into an unnatural backward-arched position, sprawled as he'd been on the bloody boulder.

He'd been tempted for a few moments to flip him over, facedown, and nudge him in the space in that position, but decided he'd not want to be treated that way, so why do it to another man? Instead he worked to arrange him as best he could given the space and the position Ace had died in.

He pressed and pressed on the one last limb that needed to fit into place, and finally, afraid the bone might snap—a sound and feeling Charlie was sure he'd never forget—he left the arm as it was, angled a bit upright, as if the dead man were calling to someone on a crowded street. It would have to do. He piled rocks on rocks and stuffed them wherever he could, saving the man's head until last. The task reminded him of the cairn he'd built for Teacup.

Charlie stood atop the two boulders that flanked the corpse, straddling the gap and looking down at Ace's uncovered head. His face was bent skyward, eyes open, sunlight glinting off their dull surface, as if he were looking at Charlie for something anything, one last thought before the inevitable. Perhaps Charlie might be able to think of something?

Thoughts slipped through his mind of the conversations he'd had with the man, not a whole lot of them that were memorable, to be honest, but maybe Ace had felt that way about Charlie too. Finally he shook his head sadly, and said, “I'm so sorry it had to be like this, Ace. You stay put now and . . . um, may the Good Lord, in all his fine ways and kindnesses, keep you in the palm of his hand.”

It was the only thing Charlie could recall from the few snippets of Bible talk and prayer he'd been subjected to throughout his young life. He bent and tucked in the cloth sack once again over Ace's eyes. It had fallen loose when Charlie dragged the man to his final resting place. The little muslin sack covered much of the dead man's face, save for his bristled chin. “'Bye, Ace,” said Charlie as he laid rock upon rock until the man beneath was no longer visible.

He looked up and shook his head. By the position of the sun pinned in the sky like a blinding moth, fluttering shards of fiery embers, he'd spent far too long at this task. He didn't regret it, but he did mount up in quick fashion and spent the next couple of hours swiveling his head to glance at his back trail.

He'd become convinced he'd see a line of black-clad riders, bristling with all manner of guns arranged along a cliff side high above, staring him down and slowly shaking their hat-topped heads. Then they would shoulder their weapons and crank off volley after volley, perfectly timed in precision movements. Charlie knew this would happen because that was what he imagined posses did to murder suspects who had escaped from their towns' jails. Throw in the death of a handful of citizens, among them an innocent child, and you have an anger that is unmatched.

Charlie rode, urging Nub to greater speeds, difficult because of the oddly winding trail that led down, down, down, then along the vast valley floor. They cut through an old streambed that wound its way through the foothills, then slowly upward into the higher hills of the Sierras. And if those were foothills, thought Charlie, then he must be in the knees by now.

A clanging, ringing sound tensed him and he pulled Nub up short on the reins. That had to be a horseshoe striking a rock. From behind him. He was sure of it. He froze. The ponderosas were slowly winding their way upward, still thick enough that he didn't think he was as much of a target as he had been in the more open scrubland below. He slowly turned, scanning over his left shoulder, moving only his eyes. Any second now, he told himself. Any second, Charlie, and you'll see that big old posse you were daydreaming about.