The Savage Gun, page 8
In that first instant, when he was exposed, lying flat on the ground, putting the butt of his rifle to his shoulder, a giant pair of iron doors swung wide open.
His blood froze.
The gates of Hell opened.
Fire and brimstone rained down on him.
10
LUKE WILKINS TOUCHED OFF BOTH TRIGGERS. HIS DOUBLE-BARRELED shotgun roared, spewing bright orange flame and buckshot straight at the tree where John had been standing moments before. Lead sprayed a hailstorm of death in a six-foot-wide pattern. The balls ripped through pine bark, tore needles and branches from the tree, ripped through the underbrush, scything foliage into shreds.
John fired his Winchester, aiming straight at the twin flowers of flame. He dropped his rifle and rolled to the left, snatching his Colt from his holster, cocking the single-action weapon as it cleared the holster. He heard the deadly thrash of shot shearing through the brush, the smack of lead balls against tree trunks.
He saw the shotgunner stagger into the lingering cloud of smoke. He jumped to his feet before the man could reload and charged toward him. The man dropped his shotgun and clawed for his pistol, a blue-black hole in his left leg, near the groin.
John stopped and fired his Colt, aiming for the man’s heart. But Luke’s left leg gave way and tilted him sideways, so the bullet from John’s gun struck his right shoulder, spun him like a top. His pistol slipped from his hand. John hammered back and took two steps, fired point-blank at the man’s belt buckle. He heard the sickening slap of the bullet as it struck flesh square in the man’s bellybutton, caving his midsection in, collapsing him like a man performing knee bends. The man sagged and pitched forward with a grunt of pain, blood spilling from his gut, jetting from his shoulder in measured, heart-pumping bursts.
John ran to the man, slid a boot under his chest, and flipped him over. He cocked the Colt and shoved its snout forward until it butted up against the man’s forehead. He reached down, jerked the man’s pistol from its holster and tossed it out of reach.
“You’re the one they call Luke,” John said.
Luke batted his eyes. They were laced with pain. He held both hands over the hole in his belly and blood seeped through the spread fingers, painting his hands so that they resembled a white-and-crimson-striped fan.
“Where are the rest of them?” John barked.
“You don’t kilt me,” Luke said.
“Not yet, you bastard. Where are the others?”
“Gone,” Luke croaked. “Help me.”
“I’ll help you, Luke. Just tell me where your friends went.”
“Fountain,” Luke said.
“Fountain Creek?”
“Yeah.”
“Then where? Where do you meet them?”
“Fuck you,” Luke said, his pig eyes narrowing under hooded lids.
“I’ll help you, same as you helped my family, Luke,” John said, his voice measured, low, menacing.
Luke’s eyes opened wide. A spasm of pain coursed through his body. Both men could smell his ruptured intestines. The odor was as foul as a barnyard or a feedlot. The stench caused Luke to crinkle his nose and even that small movement made him wince in pain. His breathing became more labored. Blood spurted from his shoulder and leg wounds with every few beats of his heart. The color that suffused his face began to fade. His complexion turned to the color of dough. His lips began to turn slightly blue as he struggled to breathe.
“Shoot me,” Luke begged. “Just go ahead and shoot me.”
“Be merciful, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“I want you to think about that little girl, Luke. My sister. And the woman. My mother. Think about them and all the others while you leak blood through your miserable guts. Think about the mercy you showed them, you pathetic sonofabitch.”
“Ahhh,” Luke breathed.
John raised his foot and ground the heel into Luke’s crotch.
Luke screamed in agony.
There was a commotion in the brush off to John’s right. Footsteps. He turned and swung his pistol toward the sounds.
Luke fixed his gaze on John’s pistol, on the silver inlay, the ivory grips. His wet eyes widened, tried to focus as his life leaked slowly away.
Ben emerged from tree and cloud shadows, the receiver of his Yellow Boy gleaming like a miniature sunrise, as if he held a bar of freshly minted gold in his hand. His face was contorted in pain and he limped into full view.
“You hurt?” John’s expression registered concern.
“Twisted my blamed ankle chasin’ after that other’n. He got clean away.”
“I thought I heard someone yelling, like he was hurt.”
“That could have been me. Could have been him. I think I nicked him.”
“Get a good look at him?” John asked.
“No. He lit a shuck. Ran like a scared rabbit. I twisted my ankle and had to give up on him. What you got here?”
Ben looked down at Luke and swore under his breath.
“God, Johnny, what’re you doing to him?”
“Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“He—he’s waitin’ for me to die, the bastard,” Luke said, a malevolent glare in his narrowed eyes. “Torturin’ me. You shoot me, mister. I’m done for.”
Ben lifted his rifle.
John put a hand on the barrel and pushed it down.
“No,” John said. “I’m going to tell Luke here about my family.”
“What?” Ben said.
“Find yourself a seat under a tree. Get off that ankle.”
Ben hobbled to a pine, rested against it, and slid to the ground. He laid the Henry across his lap, pushed his hat back off his forehead.
John squatted next to Luke, holding the pistol up so the wounded man could see it, see that it was cocked, see that his finger was just a breath away from the trigger.
“You killed my little sister, Luke. You or one of your ugly friends. She wasn’t but ten years old. Her name was Alice. She had the prettiest hair, golden hair, like spun honey.”
“I didn’t kill that kid,” Luke said.
“Shut up, Luke,” John said amiably, his eyes glittering like the eyes of the mad, like the eyes of a predator watching its prey.
“She played with dolls, made up little stories about them, and she pretended that they were real people. They were her friends and she made tea for them and mudpies and fed them like a mother spoon-feeds a real baby.”
“Don’t,” Luke said, a pleading note in his voice.
There was a sound like an empty barrel rolling across the floor of a cavernous room. Thunder rolling across the skies, the sound pushing through thick black clouds like an immense voice shouting through layers of cotton. And the sound died away, leaving a hush behind, and a darker darkness.
“She had the prettiest laugh, Luke. She said her dolls made her laugh. And she would draw pictures of them on paper and show her pictures to them, and sometimes it seemed so real, I thought her dolls were laughing with her. She found a little bird once, down in Arkansas, and it had a broken wing. She took that bird and put in a little box and told her dollies to help her take care of it. She put medicine on its wing and one of her dolls was a nurse and she had that little birdie hopping around in no time. That’s how kind she was. That’s how she treated God’s creatures. When the bird got well and flew away, Alice just laughed and laughed, and she told her dolls how much they had helped that poor bird.”
“Stop,” Luke croaked. “No more. Please. I’m dyin’.”
“Alice is already dead, Luke. She was shot to pieces by you and your men. I buried her with her favorite doll. They’re both in the cold ground. And you ain’t even goin’ to get that, you miserable sonofabitch. You’re going to feed the wolves and the worms.”
Luke gasped for air. His eyes rolled wildly in their sockets.
Ben sat there, aghast at what John was doing.
None of them heard the man creeping up on them. Pete Rutter had heard the voices. He had circled around, slowly and carefully, so that he had a clear view of the three men. Now he stared dumbstruck at the three of them through a pair of binoculars. He was close enough to hear what they were saying, but he knew he could not be seen. He watched and he listened.
Then he saw the pistol in John’s hand. His jaw dropped as he focused the binoculars, brought the pistol up large enough to see the silver inlay, the image sharp in the lenses of his glasses.
He looked at Luke.
Blood dripped from Luke’s shoulder and there was a large stain on his midsection, another on his leg. His face looked pale, his features threaded with pain.
He had seen enough. There was no saving Luke and he was outnumbered. One of the old fellow’s bullets had struck his rifle, knocked the sights off. The young feller and the old guy were too far away for a pistol shot.
His heart pounding, Pete retreated, found his horse, and led him for some distance before he mounted him and stole away through the dark trees, heading toward Fountain Creek. Ollie would be mad as hell, but he wasn’t going to stick around and face up to the young one. The one with the fancy pistol, the one who was torturing Luke and enjoying himself while Luke lay there, bleeding to death, his guts poking out of his abdomen like oily blue snakes.
Lightning flashed and there was a thundercrack that made four men jump inside their skins.
Thunder pealed across the sky and behind it the nattering whisper of rain, steaming down the mountainside, great sheets of it blown south and east by the wind.
“My mother, her name was Clare,” John continued, “was the sweetest person I ever knew. She had a heart of gold and used to read stories to me at night. Even when she was tired from working all day, she’d tuck me and my sister Alice in bed every night and tell us stories until our eyelids got heavy and droopy and we fell asleep. She made my father Dan happy, too. And he doted on her. He treated her like a queen, and she treated him like a king. That was my mother, Luke, and she’s lying in the ground, too, all of her stories dead on her lips.”
“I can’t take no more,” Luke said. “Please don’t tell me no more about them people.”
“Them people, Luke? Why, you don’t deserve to breathe the same air they did. You killed them. For what? Some gold that you’ll spend on whores and whiskey? Buy yourself a new pair of boots, or a saddle? Spend money you didn’t earn and took from truly good people? People you murdered, you bastard.”
“It was Ollie,” Luke said. “He made us do it.”
“Ollie?”
“Hobart. He put us up to it.”
“Well, I can’t wait to meet Ollie Hobart,” John said. “At the business end of this Colt in my hand. I wonder how brave he’s going to be. As brave as you, you sniveling little shit?”
“John, you done said enough,” Ben said.
They could hear the rain now, off in the distance, and there was lightning close by, stitching jagged lines of silver in the black clouds, striking the ground as thunderclaps boomed in their ears and echoed through the canyons, off the high rimrock, and off into desolate nothingness.
The fissure in Luke’s belly had widened and coils of intestines were easing out. They glistened like water snakes or nightcrawlers. The hole in his abdomen had grown larger, probably from the time John had put his boot on his testicles, forcing Luke to react.
“Ben, bring up the horses and shake our slickers, will you?” John said. “Can you manage with that game ankle?”
“Yeah. I can manage.” Ben got to his feet, resting against the tree for support. “How much longer you going to rag this poor bastard?”
“Just a while longer, Ben. Go on. That rain’s going to hit us pretty quick.”
“Yeah. I’ll get the horses.”
Ben hobbled off, using his rifle as a crutch.
“Luke, you still here?”
Luke had closed his eyes. His breathing was shallow and there were rales in it, as if his throat had filled with sand.
Luke opened his eyes.
“Yeah, you bastard.” Raspy, weak, that was Luke’s voice now. He had not long to live, John thought.
“I’ll put you out of your misery if you tell me where Ollie and the others are going. Where they’re going to hole up and wait for you.”
“You won’t do it.”
“Yes, I will. One little squeeze of the trigger and your lamp goes out. Real quick. Real painless. Just tell me what I want to know and it’ll be over just like that. You won’t even feel the bullet.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah, you can pray, too, Luke. And go on suffering. I don’t mind that. I’m suffering. Let me tell you about Pa, Dan Savage. We haven’t got to him yet, but he was a man to ride the river with, Luke. Best father a boy could have. Hunted with him, fished with him, farmed with him, broke bread with him at my mother’s fine table, with my little sister right by his side every night, adoring him as much as my mother did.”
“No more, Savage.”
“Oh, there’s a lot more, Luke. There’s my pa, and my uncle. Yeah, you killed him, too. And Ben’s brother. Maybe he’ll tell you about his brother, Leland; we called him Lee. A hell of a guy.”
“Pueb . . .”
“What’s that, Luke?”
“Pueblo,” Luke gasped. “Ollie. Goin’ to Pueblo.”
“Ah, Pueblo. And, where in Pueblo were you going to meet him?”
“Can . . .”
“Can’t hear you, Luke.”
“Cantina.”
“What’s the name of the cantina, Luke? Hell, we’re almost there. You won’t have to bear the awful pain much longer. Just tell me the name of the cantina.”
Luke convulsed as pain shot through his innards like molten fire. He sucked in a breath and the air stayed in his lungs a long time, as if it was never going to come out.
“Rosa,” Luke growled, as if the sand in his throat had turned to gravel. “Rosa’s Cantina. On Calle Vaca. Now, do it, Savage. Do what you done promised.”
Ben rode up, leading John’s horse. Lightning swept the sky in jagged streaks, the thunder following almost immediately, a great roaring in the sky, a thousand cannons belching at once, cannonballs rolling across the hollow deck of a huge ship and fading into the distance, like the faint echoes of long-ago storms.
Ben had his slicker on, and he held John’s in his hand.
“Here you go, John,” Ben said. When John looked up, Ben tossed the wadded raincoat down at John. It landed next to him, in a crumpled heap, like a yellow bird fallen from the sky.
Luke groaned.
John picked up his slicker, stood up. He slid his arms through it and snugged it up.
“Now?” Luke said. “You goin’ to send me on my way now, Savage? I done told you want you want to know.”
John looked down at Luke. His face bore almost no expression.
“Do you know what penance is, Luke?”
“No. Just get it over with, will you?”
“Penance is the price you pay for your sins. That’s what the preacher told us. Now, that’s what you’re going to do now. You’re going to do penance.”
John picked up Luke’s pistol and tucked it inside his belt.
Then he climbed on his horse.
“You just going to leave him, Johnny?” Ben said.
“Yeah, Ben. I ain’t no cold-blooded killer like old Luke there. I shot him in a fair fight, and that’s as far as I’ll go. This day, anyways.”
“You know something, Johnny?”
“Something?”
“You got all the makings of a real bastard.”
John turned Gent and began to ride away as the first stalks of rain speared through the pine branches, splattering on their slickers. A lightning flash splashed across Luke’s face, a face frozen in terror. Rain spattered into his mouth and eyes and he tried to sit up. He stretched out a hand as if reaching for something. Something that was no longer there. Then he fell back. There was an ominous rattle in his throat and the breath he expelled was his last.
“You ain’t got a bit of mercy in you, Johnny,” Ben said as they rode away, heading east, away from the creek, away from all the deaths of that sullen and sorrowful day.
John said nothing. He knew he was not satisfied at all.
There were still seven killers left. Seven bad men still alive.
And, no, he thought, there was no mercy in him.
11
BEN PULLED ON THE REINS. DYNAMITE CAME TO A HALT. THE DAPPLED gray gelding whickered and tossed its head as raindrops needled its eyes. John stopped when Gent came up alongside.
“You want that shotgun, Johnny?” He pointed to the ground.
John looked down at Luke’s scattergun.
“No, let it rust,” he said.
“Perfectly good weapon. We might could use it.”
Raindrops spattered on the twin barrels, the stock. Specks of bright red blood turned brown and ran off the metal and wood, swirling in lazy curlicues along the length of the barrel and stock. The sight reminded John of a time when he had cut his finger with a knife. His mother had held his hand over a white bowl and poured water on the wound. The blood had dripped into the bowl first, then the water had turned it brown as it diluted it. He had been fascinated by his own blood and the way the water had mixed with it, taken away its redness.
“It’s got blood on it,” John said.
“Yeah, that feller’s blood.”
“No. I mean different.”
Ben nodded. “Yeah, maybe. What about that pistol you took offen him?”
“He didn’t use it on our people. I might use it on his.”
Ben shook his head and tapped Dynamite’s flanks with his spurs. The horse stepped ahead and they rode through the rain.
“Still want to track them fellers?” Ben asked, raising his voice above the blowing rain.
“Yeah. I want to know as much about them as I can. Where they camped, for one thing.”
“We’ll pick up their trail.”
John searched the ground for the remnants of tracks, and found them, the depressions filling up with water, but still visible.
“This must have been where they camped,” Ben said, as lightning blistered the clouds with jagged bolts. The clearing lit up like a stage set and John saw the places where they had put their bedrolls, concave depressions in the earth. Their fire ring was black with ashes and charred wood. It was filling up with water, floating some of the burnt chips and splinters of firewood up to the surface.
