Killing Trail
By
Charles Allen Gramlich
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Except for brief quotations, such as those to be included in reviews, no section of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author.
The short stories in this collection are works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is coincidental.
Dedication: To Louis L’Amour, who made me love the west.
And to Roger James, my brother-in-law, who introduced me to L’Amour’s work and who never griped when I borrowed his paperbacks. All of his paperbacks.
Text Copyright © 2010 by Charles Allen Gramlich.
Cover Photo & Design copyright © 2010 by Lana Gramlich.
Published by Charles Allen Gramlich, 2010 at Smashwords
Contact at kainja@hotmail.com
“Killing Trail” originally appeared in somewhat different form in Elbow Creek Magazine in 2001.
“Once Upon a Time with the Dead” first appeared in Bits of the Dead, 2008.
1. Killing Trail…
2. Showdown at Wild Briar…
3. Powder Burn…
4. Once Upon a Time with the Dead…
5. Vignette… Location
6. A Wild West of Your Own…
7. Louis L’Amour: An Appreciation…
8. About the Author…
9. Other Books by Charles Allen Gramlich…
10. Back Cover Copy…
KILLING TRAIL
--- 1 ---
Under a false dawn they dumped the girl in my yard.
The shout of thudding hooves jerked me from sleep, Spencer rifle to hand, and I made it out the door in time to see a shadowy clot of riders melt away up the hill above my ranch. The fleeing riders made me think rustlers, but a glance at the corral showed all three of my horses milling about.
Then I saw the pile of gingham lying in the dirt by the gate of the corral, and within the pile I found the girl. She looked dead, her face a mask of blood and with some savage wound in her chest. That wound, just below the heart, had rusted the whole front of her dress with red, but when I got down beside her I could hear the faint whisper of her breathing and see the thin, pale steam of it in the morning chill.
Dropping the Spencer, I gathered her up in my arms and rushed her into the house and to my cot. Lighting a lamp showed me the damage more clearly, and it was bad. The blood on her face was from a cut scalp and split lip, but the wound to her chest had been made by a bullet with the gun pressed flush against her body when the trigger was pulled. The powder-burned gingham of her dress was part of her flesh now, and though the bleeding had slowed to a seep for the moment it would surely start flowing again if I tried to clean the wound.
The nearest town was Broken Axle, maybe ten miles away. But they had no doctor there. Stopover was another fifteen miles further on, and, though they had a doc, I figured it would take more hours than this girl had left to get there by buckboard. She was going to die and all I could do was try to ease her passing.
Warming some water on the stove and wetting a rag, I started laving the girl’s face clean of crusted blood. She had red hair, very pretty, and as I cleaned and looked I felt a sudden, sharp sickness roil in my stomach.
“Angie,” I said. “No, no! Please no!”
The pleading didn’t help. It was Angela Cody lying there. I hadn’t seen her since Cheyenne, Wyoming, almost five years ago. She’d been fifteen and I a year older and full of mad at the world for taking my ma so young. Angie had liked me and I’d liked her. But her father made it clear he wouldn’t allow it, and so when my own pa disappeared while on a drunk I’d lit out further west for the Salt River Range to make my fortune—in one thing or another. I had no idea why Angie would be anywhere near the Salt River area now.
“Angie.”
I called her name, hoping to cut through the fog of her stupor, to bring her around enough to find out who’d shot her, and hoping—somehow—that she wasn’t hurt as bad as I thought.
“Angie!”
She stirred, moaned, then opened the shocking green eyes that had been her most dazzling feature as a kid. They still were, though the years had wrought other changes, had remade her completely into a woman of exceptional beauty. Even with her mangled lips she smiled when she recognized me, and that smile made something in my chest not work right.
“Lane Holland,” she said. “I was hoping...to see you. Not…like this.”
She coughed, and I got my arms under her shoulders and lifted a bit so she wouldn’t choke on the blood that spilled over her chin. That blood was bright, frothy—the kind that comes out of torn lungs.
“It’s all right,” I said, trying to keep despair out of my voice. “You shouldn’t talk. I’m going to get you to a doctor.”
Angie gave a tiny shake of her head.
“No. I’ll not make it. And you have to hear.”
“Hear what?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t see what holding her like this was doing to my eyes.
“Hear...about. Dad…and Royal Flynn.”
“Flynn! What the hell?”
I’d known Flynn in Cheyenne too. He was a gambler and occasional gunfighter who worked the saloons where my father drank. I’d never liked him; his jokes had been too cruel. And he’d beat my pa to a pulp once, for no reason I could see.
A couple years back Flynn had moved into the Salt River Range and taken up the pretense of being a rancher. He’d put together some cattle and some smaller farms, most of which he’d won at cards, and strutted about like he was on the way to making an empire for himself. He wanted my stead, because it had a regular water supply and because it butted up against two of his other places. But I didn’t play cards, and I’d refused the sell when he’d made an offer. Once he’d realized I was Tasker Holland’s son, he’d stopped asking.
Angie took a breath then, to earn air for more talk, and though she tensed with the pain of it she got out a spill of words.
“Mom died last year and Dad decided we’d move to Stopover. He said this land was growing fast. Needed a good lawyer.” She smiled again a little. “I wanted to come myself. But I didn’t know…dad had been gambling too. He’d lost to Flynn in Cheyenne and had some deal about coming here to pay what he owed.”
She swallowed, then choked again, coughing up blood that spattered like daubs of red wax over my shirt. I wiped her mouth, told her once more not to talk. She didn’t listen.
“Last night…at Flynn’s cabin. Whatever he wanted, dad refused. But Flynn wanted…me too. He.…”
She clutched my wrist tight, though how she had the strength I couldn’t guess.”
“Dad’s still there, Lane. The cabin. Close…somewhere. Help him.”
“I will, Angie. I promise.”
I leaned to kiss her forehead then.
“Why’d he bring you here, Angie? To my place?”
“He knew.”
Her eyes were too green as she watched me. I frowned.
“He asked me last night to love him. Told him I couldn’t. That I loved another.” She licked paling lips. “He doesn’t—”
She choked a third time; I was sure it was the last. But she found life from somewhere to say:
“Nobody rejects Royal Flynn. He told me that. Before he.... Before he—”
“Don’t, Angie,” I protested. “You don’t have to say it.”
“He tried…rape.” Her breath burbled in her throat. “I fought. Got his pistol. But he…beat me. The gun…fired.”
She touched her chest, her wound. Her last words sighed away and she passed. I think I cried. It didn’t do any good.
--- 2 ---
I buried Angela Cody out back of the house, up on the hill at a place the wildflowers would carpet come spring. Then I stoked my rage, buckled on my old Colt Army .44s, and picked up my Spencer from where it still lay near the corral.
I saddled Ace, my best horse, and left the gate open so the other two could range. They, and the few head of cattle I had, would survive for a few days until I returned. I wasn’t going to worry about not returning.
By midmorning I’d saddlebagged some coffee and grub and was ready to ride, jacketed against the early autumn cold. I looked around once. Four years ago I’d stopped to bum a meal from the old man who owned this place. I’d ended up staying, and when the fellow died eight months later he left it to me free and clear. It had been a gift, better than the riches I’d thought I wanted at sixteen. And by now I’d worked it till it was mine. But it wasn’t much when I stacked it against the life of a beautiful woman who died moments after letting me know she loved me.
“Let’s go,” I said to Ace. And we went.
We went high. Into the mountains. I knew the cabin Angie had been talking about. It was a one-room affair that squatted along Widow Fork Creek. I’d hunted all around it. The story was that Flynn had picked it up for a song from a broke cowboy.
As I rode I was thinking about Flynn’s reasons for dumping Angie on my property. I figured there was more to it than jealousy because she preferred me to him. Flynn knew me, from Cheyenne, from trying to buy my ranch, from other times when I’d showed him less respect than he thought he deserved because he cut a big swath with women, money, and guns.
No, he didn’t like me, but he knew me. He had to know that Angie’s death would bring me hunting whoever was responsible. If I got killed on that hunt, Flynn would surely find a way to take my land. And I was about to give him a chance at that killing by going after him with a Colt.
There was only one problem for his plan. I was sure he’d have men waiting to ambush me along the trails to his cabin. But a man who hunts to supplement a table fare of beans and hardtack learns well how to stalk his prey. Flynn was a collector who never really saw the things he collected, and I was betting that I knew the area around his cabin better than he did.
Two trails led into the valley of the Widow Fork. Trails for horses, that is. I took neither. Instead, I drop-reined Ace at a place where the grass grew tasty and took off cross-country on foot. By trail it was nearly twelve miles to the cabin from where I left Ace. Straight through on a hike it was about four, a fair slab of it vertical down the face of Cane Bluff to the banks of Widow Fork Creek. It was a climb I’d made before and by early evening I was nestled up against a fallen oak at the edge of the creek, watching Flynn’s place and waiting for full dark. Soon enough, it came.
The area around the cabin had once been clear-cut, but Flynn hadn’t bothered to keep it clear and there was considerable scrub brush. I went through that scrub on my belly, moving a foot or two at a time. It took the better part of an hour to make it to a window where I could lift my head to scan the cabin’s inside.
Even through the heat-misted glass I could see three men seated at a table playing poker. With a clench of fists around my Spencer, I recognized Flynn’s flat-brimmed hat, though his face was turned down to look at his cards. I didn’t see Angie’s father, Hutton Cody.
From somewhere else in the room came a voice with a grating, whiny edge to it. I couldn’t make out the words but Flynn apparently didn’t like them. He glanced up quickly from the cards he’d been dealt, and irritation was written ugly across his usually handsome features.
“Leave him alone, Boren. You’re supposed to be watching out front anyway.”
“Aw, Boss,” the whiny voice said. “I’m just funnin’.”
Flynn came half way out of his chair, his right hand a claw hovering over the butt of his pistol.
“I said! Leave him alone!”
The gambler was drawn as tight as wet leather dried in the sun. He was sweating; his cheek twitched. I’d never seen Flynn look anything but calm. I had to believe his tenseness had to do with the way Angie had fought him, the way she’d died.
I hoped so anyway.
“Sure, sure, Boss,” the man called Boren said. “Whatever you say.”
Flynn tapped one of the other players on the shoulder. “Keep an eye,” he ordered.
The man got up promptly, grabbed a shotgun from against the wall behind him and went toward the front of the cabin. Boren came to the table then, looking as much like a weasel as he had sounded. He was carrying a folding knife, which he closed and slipped into his pocket. Clearly shaken, he sat down and was dealt a hand. It was only a moment more before Flynn snorted and slapped his cards down open on the table.
Boren laughed. “Hell, you win again, Boss. Ain’t no beatin’ you tonight.”
Flynn only grunted, and as he raked in the pot and prepared to deal again I shifted position at the window to see more of the cabin’s interior. Some past owner had cut a big cross in the front door for shooting through and the man with the shotgun stood looking out of it. I shivered a bit. If Boren had been doing his job and watching that window he might have seen me crawling up on the cabin.
Then I saw Hutton Cody and forgot the might-have-beens. Cody was gagged and tied to a rickety old chair. He had a shallow cut across his cheek that I figured had been made by Boren’s knife, but which I’d chalk up against Flynn anyway.
Angie’s father was in his early fifties, about the same age my pa should have been, and when I’d known him before he’d been as straight and tall and thin as an aspen, but with the air of a dignified oak. Now he was bent, his face hammered and bloody. Worse than the abrasions, though, was the emptiness of his expression. His eyes, the color and brilliance of which he’d given to his daughter, were dull and sick looking.
It looked like Cody knew about his daughter. I wondered if he blamed himself, for ever having dealt with the likes of Royal Flynn. I sort of felt like he should blame himself, but maybe there was still a little anger in me from having been told once upon a time that I wasn’t good enough to mix my blood with his. I pushed those thoughts away. If I didn’t try to help Cody now I’d be proving him right for those prejudices of long ago.
While I was pulling at ideas like weeds as to what to do next, one of the outlaws, a big man with hair going silver over the temples, shoved back from the table and threw down his cards.
“Cleans me out.”
Flynn chuckled. “There’ll be more, Wagoner. Once we get Lane Holland’s ranch.”
I had no idea what Flynn was talking about. My ranch wasn’t worth much in cash. But I didn’t have time to think on it.
Wagoner strode to the door. “I’m gonna walk up on the rim, see if I can find Smoke or Hicks. See if they’ve had any sign of Holland. You’re so sure he’ll come?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Flynn said. “Soon as he figures out who the girl is, he’ll come. We left plenty of tracks for him.”
My mind started clicking. They’d expected me to trail ‘em, not for Angie to tell me about them. That meant, I hoped, that I was here earlier than they figured I would be.
Wagoner slipped into his coat and paused to roll and light a cigarette.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
Flynn waved him out. Boren tittered, started to say something.
“Shut up, Boren,” Flynn said, not looking away from the deck of cards he’d just fanned out on the table. “And fetch us some coffee.”
Wagoner tossed his burned match on the floor and picked up his rifle before stepping out on the front porch of the cabin into the darkness. I waited until he closed the door, then crept from the window to watch him as he stood for a moment, smoking his cigarette down to a nub before flicking it away. Big as he was, his face looked gaunt, his eyes hollow. I wondered if there were any guilt in him over what had happened to Angie. Probably not, though from what I’d heard he was the best of a bad lot.
As the man moved away from the cabin I followed him on a hunter’s silent feet. He paused beside the corral, empty at the moment with all the horses tucked away for the night in the small farm’s dilapidated barn.
“For two bits I’d saddle up and ride,” Wagoner said.
He spoke aloud to the night, but it wasn’t the night that answered, or that eared back the hammer on a Spencer rifle behind him.
“That’d be the smartest thing you’ve done since you came west, Wagoner. Lose the rifle.”
Wagoner froze. We were out of the line of sight of the man watching through the cabin’s front door. No one could see Wagoner here; no help was coming to him. He lifted his hand slowly, holding the rifle out and away from his body before dropping it to earth.
“I’m guessing you’re Holland,” he said. “But how do you know my name?”
“I’ve been watching you boys slap cards for the last hour. I know each of your names. I even know what hands you’ve been playing.” This wasn’t strictly true but I could see no harm in adding to his nervousness. “And yes, I’m Lane Holland.”
He was silent. He knew why I was here.
“Yeah,” I continued. “I’m a friend of the woman you boys tossed away on my doorstep like so much chaff.”
“You got it wrong there, Holland. I’d nothing to do with that.”
“You were there.”
“No!” He shook his head. And his next words were rushed. “I helped bring her here. And her Pa. I’ll admit that. But Flynn had me running errands into Broken Axle when everything else happened. Go feel my horse’s back. Where the saddle was. It’s gotta still be warm. I couldn’t of been here half an hour before you got here.”
“Turn around, Wagoner.”
The big man turned slowly to face me, hands away from his sides, his holster buttoned under his coat.
“Give me a chance, Holland. I’ll ride.”
“Why should I?”
“You ain’t got a reason, and I can’t think one up this fast, but I guess just because I’m asking.”
I gave a very small chuckle, took a few steps toward him so he could see my eyes better.
“Unbuckle your gun belt,” I said.
With one hand he unbuttoned the lower half of his coat and stripped off his belt and pistol, letting them join his rifle in the dirt.
“I am going to give you a chance, Wagoner. One chance. Not because I like you or believe you, but because I don’t have any rope to tie you up with and a shot would bring attention. Get your horse and go. Leave your guns and ride hard and fast. Ride a long way. And if you ever see me again.... Well, let’s just say, don’t.”
Wagoner looked at me a second, then turned on his heels for the barn. He took two steps and stopped.
“Even if you don’t believe me, Holland, I wasn’t there when Flynn...when he hurt the girl.” He hesitated again. It seemed important for him to have me believe him. “I don’t know what I would have done. But I like to think I wouldn’t of stood for it.” His words chopped off and he walked on.
I slipped my way back to the cabin’s window. I did believe Wagoner. Not that it mattered now.
Ten minutes passed and I began to wonder if I’d misjudged the big man. I had his guns with me but he could have had a spare in the barn. I was considering naming myself a fool when the sudden pound of hooves broke sharp across the still night. I was watching through the window as Flynn came out of his seat, eyes quick and dangerous.
“It’s Wagoner!” the gambler shouted. “The son of a bitch is running!”
Palming a pistol, Flynn bolted from the cabin. The man with the shotgun followed. But Boren hesitated at the door. I had no choice now. I’d not get another such chance.
I smashed the glass out of the window with the butt of my rifle and swung quickly into the room. Boren looked behind him at the noise, eyes going wide with surprise. He dropped his hand for the pistol at his side. I worked the Spencer’s lever twice and the slugs smashed him back against the cabin wall, smashed him back and down, tearing splinters from the oak logs where the lead ripped through flesh.
The shotgun man was on the porch and turned at the Spencer’s double blast of sound. He carried an old Greener 10-gauge, started to drag its barrel around toward me. I shot him through the throat and he dropped like a sack of wet feed.
A quick glance toward Hutton Cody revealed a man whose eyes were open but full of void. He didn’t look back at me, and didn’t even flinch when a bullet came skipping through the door to tear up splinters by my boots.
Not wanting to be trapped inside the cabin, I took a dive back through the window, rolling across brush into the shallow cover of some rocks that had once been gathered for a wall. I saw Flynn running for the sagging barn and pumped two bullets his way. One of them knocked him sprawling, but he lurched to his feet again in an instant and dove through the dark mouth of the barn door.
I reloaded, breathing hard.
As I started to think I had Flynn trapped, a splintering sound came from behind the barn and I knew the outlaw had found a new way out. Cursing, I took off running, reached the corral as the shadows of a horse and rider burst through a jagged opening at the back of the barn and took off up the main trail leading out of the valley.
I raised the Spencer to my shoulder. But just then two other horsemen appeared on the trail above, no doubt the killers Flynn had left along that road as a welcoming party for me. The shooting must have brought them, and now one of them fired toward the cabin, clearly not seeing me in the darkness by the corral. I returned fire as Flynn reached them, scattering the black knot of the riders with four swift bullets. One shot drew a yelp of pain, and then the outlaws were gone up the hill, hoof beats fading quickly behind them.
I lowered the rifle, doubting that my enemies would be back any time soon. I’d fired at Flynn from the cabin and then from the outside brush only moments later. I figured he’d run because he thought there was more than one of me.
Walking to the front of the barn I looked at the place where one of my shots had knocked Flynn down. The heel of his boot lay there all by itself in the dust. I picked it up with a curse and turned back toward the cabin.
--- 3 ---
Two days after I’d shot it out with Flynn and his cronies I drove a wagon down the main street of Stopover. I’d found it in the barn there on the Widow Fork. It was the Cody family wagon and Hutton Cody lay in the back covered with blankets against the chill. He hadn’t said a word since I’d freed him, though I’d managed to get him to drink a little water and broth at our stops. He worried me. His skin was sallow, his face gaunt. Whatever anger I’d felt for him had melted away in the face of what his daughter’s loss had done to him.
After I saw Cody to bed in the local doctor’s office I headed immediately across the street to the mercantile to pick up shells and grub and cold weather traveling gear. I was going after Flynn. He had Angie to pay for. And her dad. And other things from years back. Flynn had land here and if I waited long enough he’d probably return. But I’d never been a man full of patience and I didn’t want him to be able to plough the farm to his own liking for our showdown.
There were a few things I had to do before I left, though. First, I went down to the stage station and sent a package off to Cheyenne, Wyoming. A note was attached, addressed to Flynn, who I had a feeling might head back to his old stomping grounds once he left the Salt River Range.
The note was short. It read:
Royal,
I’ll be coming for you now. The package is just a reminder of how close we’ve become. – Lane Holland
In the package I put the boot heel I’d shot off him at Widow Fork. There was a nice big tear in the leather from a bullet that could have taken off his foot if it had been an inch higher. Of course, I couldn’t be sure he’d ever get the package, but knowing the west I figured word would get around to him eventually. And besides making him mad, it might make him wonder just how crazy I was. I figured leaving Flynn wondering was a good idea.
The second thing I did was get a few day’s rest and feed up Ace on some corn so he’d have the strength for hard riding. It was a killing trail I was headed out on, and it likely wouldn’t be a short one. I hired a boy to look after my cattle and horses while I was gone.
On the morning that I saddled Ace for the long ride I stopped by the doctor’s office for a last look-see at Hutton Cody. He was sitting propped up in bed and I thought his color was a little better in the few places where he didn’t have bruises. The doc, a tough old fellow named Johnson, said Cody had been eating some, but Angie’s father still wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I stood by the older man’s bed and explained to him how I was going to hunt Flynn down and see the bastard hanged or dead. I told him I’d be back when it was over and take him to see Angie’s grave, and would put up a headstone. I told him quite a few things, and when I finished I turned to go.
Cody spoke then, three words, though he still never looked at me.
“Be careful, Lane,” he said.
--- 4 ---
Royal Flynn rode a black horse with a white tail that stood nearly seventeen hands high. It had a distinctive hoof print, and when I missed Flynn in Cheyenne and half a dozen other places I started asking questions about the horse as well as the man. Seemed to me it might be harder to disguise the former than the latter.
Everywhere I went I left word: Lane Holland is hunting Royal Flynn. Soon, the story of the hunt and the boot-heel-package had spread through the west like ripples over a pond. Yet, Flynn didn’t stop. He rode fast and rumors said he rode with two bad men beside him. I couldn’t believe he was scared of me, but I added that to the word I sent out, in hopes he’d turn to face me. He didn’t.
Then I heard whispers of the black horse and found his tracks outside a shantytown called Bold Acre. With a hot trail under me, I picked up the pace. Winter was swelling fast over the land and the creeks were full of ice in the mornings, but Ace and I kept coming.
Once we were ambushed and Ace saved me. He smelled them, or saw a glint that shouldn’t have been there, and he shied off the trail so quick that the bullet meant for me tore up dirt instead. I had my Spencer out and was hunkered down behind a boulder for a fight when I heard the sound of fleeing hooves and knew I’d have to take up the trail again.
Yes, it was hard to believe Flynn was scared of me. I had no rep as a gunman. I’d had one fight at a trading post down in the Sierra Madres and had shot two men in it who were supposed to be salty. But no one knew I’d been involved. And though I’d killed a couple of Flynn’s boys on Widow Fork Creek and shot him out of his boot, that hardly seemed enough to send a fellow like Flynn running. He’d killed five or six men it was said, several of them face to face.
I remembered the day Flynn had beaten my father with his fists. Ma, in the last year of her life then—though none of us knew it—had sent me to the saloon to fetch pa for supper. I was twelve, short for my age, and I’d come through the doors into the Bucket of Blood just as Flynn knocked dad down for the sixth time. I had an old penknife for whittling and I went after Flynn with it. He was in his mid-twenties then, big enough to collar me and slap me around as I lunged and lunged at him.
I remembered how an old buffalo hider who was supposed to be part Indian had said to Flynn: “That’un’ll kill you one day.”
I began to wonder if Flynn had taken that old comment seriously. It seemed ridiculous and I knew I was grasping at straws to explain the outlaw’s behavior. But gunfighters are notoriously a superstitious breed.
Superstitious or not, afraid or merely cautious, I expected Flynn to fight when I caught him. No gunfighter who backed water would last long in this country. But first I had to catch him.
At the border of Montana the tracks of the three I was chasing separated. The black and another horse kept on to the north. The third rider turned south. I followed the trail of Flynn’s mount, catching up a bit every day until I rode into a town with no name and found the two horses I sought hitched to the rail in front of a saloon, their hides still damp from being ridden.
I tied off Ace and stepped out of the day’s chill through a door into a place that was warm with sweat and smoke and booze. Holsters were buckled to my hips and the right hand gun was in my fist. Two men stood at the bar and they turned to look, then straightened up so fast that one knocked over his beer.
“Where’s Flynn?” I asked.
One man was nervous enough to talk. The other seemed sullen and ready to fight. But I had the drop.
“He ain’t here,” the talking one said. “He took off.”
“That’s his horse out there. The black.”
“Yeah. Was. But he traded it to Hicks here. Said he was tired of the damn big thing.”
I chuckled. “Not bad. I fell for it. He knew I was following the trail by the black’s prints. He’s still running and he used you two to buy him some time. You boys must feel awfully dumb for getting taken that way. Might as well tell me where he’s gone.”
The talking one wasn’t completely stupid. I could see his mouth working as the truth took hold. Hicks, of the sullen face, just compounded his mistakes.
“You wouldn’t be yapping so big if you didn’t have that gun in your hand.”
I don’t know what made me do it. Frustration at a long trail, maybe, or anger at the thought that these men had been part of the bunch who’d dumped Angela Cody on my doorstep.
I dropped my Colt in its holster. The talking one took half a dozen steps to the left and put his hands on the bar.
“I don’t want any part of it,” he said.
Hicks looked around at his partner, looked back at me, licked his lips, and grabbed for his gun. I wasn’t there when they buried him.
I glanced at the other one.
“Flynn went to Nevada. To the silver mines at Comstock.”
We left out of there, Ace and me, riding fast to reach the mountain passes before snow closed them for the winter. I gave Ace his head and the bronze stallion gave me his heart. It was a near thing, but we made it. If we hadn’t, Royal Flynn would have been safe until spring because in the dead of winter no one crosses the Rockies.
Freezing and thawing, fording streams made deadly by ice, struggling through drifts of early snow that would have broken another horse’s spirit, we made it through. White as ghosts we came down out of the hills in the midst of a blizzard and rode into a little community called Beebee. Only our eyes were alive, and both of us had spots of frostbite. In spite of what I’d try to do, the actions of the Colts were frozen solid, and if Flynn had been in that town he could have killed me with an ice pick. But he wasn’t there and we warmed and recovered, the horse, myself, my guns.
When the blizzard broke, we rode on toward the boomtowns that had sprung up all around the Comstock ore deposits. The people of Beebee watched us go and called us fools, but we went. A week later, on a night clear and bitter but with the wind still, I walked Ace across a frozen creek into a wild silver-town by the name of Luck. Moonlight danced off the snow, carving the land with strange shadows, but behind the town’s windows were lights and warmth, laughter and the fog of conversations.
I stabled Ace, forked some hay for him, then warmed my hands over the wood stove in the livery man’s office. I unwrapped my guns from the woolen cloth in which they had ridden under my coat next to my skin. This time the hammers clicked smoothly and the cylinders spun with a wicked music. In the light from the stove, the paper cartridges gleamed as I loaded them into the .44s.
I knew where Royal Flynn was. I’d caught his silhouette against the window of the Rolling Rock saloon as I’d ridden past. Holstering the pistols, I made that forty yard walk, pushing back my sheepskin coat as I stepped inside with snowflakes melting on my hat and shoulders.