Abandon

“Don’t stare at me that a way,” Oatha warned. “Like you’re lookin at some kind a damn deviant. You lost your brother. I lost all three a mine to the Federals at Malvern Hill. You didn’t have to sit there with Nathan, tellin him about home while he’s near cut in half, everthin pourin out of him. Sight like that gets stamped on your mind, you can f**kin forget about ever gettin shed of it.”

But Ezekiel had already descended back into the canyon, to his little cabin, to Gloria. He saw her in bed, felt her grief, and all the memories of Leadville and the boys and whatever selfish strain of freedom he’d associated with them and had tasted today wilted into the sham they were. His lips moved, her name on them, and he loved her more, needed her more than he ever had, thought of all the things he’d not said, wondered if she knew them anyway, then reckoned not, because he hadn’t known himself until this moment.

He heard a deep unsanded voice. Fought to make his eyes open.

When they did, the boulderfield and mist and men and snow had faded to gray, and a darkness whose identity he well knew had whittled down his periphery of vision, so his whole world seemed to blacken around the edges like a winter-killed rose.

Oatha was only inches from his face now, his eyes such a pale and clouded blue, some might have mistaken him for a blind man.

It took Ezekiel a moment to comprehend the words.

“That man Billy shot. He kilt?” Ezekiel could only nod, utterly stove up. “Who else knows about Bart?” The darkness was closing in. “Boy, you best find the strength to provide a answer.”

Just me and Doc.

“Just me and Doc,” he whispered, his lips barely moving.

“How’d you know to find us here? Billy’s wife? Bessie tell you?”

Tracks.

“Your tracks.”

“Yours and the doctor’s wife know about all this?” Ezekiel shook his head. “Yeah, that tastes of a lie.”

Gloria don’t know.

“Well, I can tell you we damn sure ain’t takin no chances on a couple a leaky-mouthed bitches, feedin off their range.”

Gloria don’t know a thing.

“H-h-h-he’s sayin somethin, Oatha.”

You let her be.

“Well, if he is, I can’t hear it.”

“I-I-I bet Gloria knows. No tellin who else she’s told.”

“We’ll kill ever man, woman, and child in Abandon if that’s what it comes to. You set to see this through, Billy?”

“Y-y-yes, Oatha.”

“You sure? Ain’t gonna try to crawfish out a this?”

“For a fact.”

“Better go on and curl this one up then so we can sail away.”

“M-M-M-Oatha, he’s almost dead any—”

“I don’t give a good goddamn how almost dead he is. I ain’t quittin this spot with that star-toter still above snakes. Savvy?”

Ezekiel heard his death sentence, felt a glimmer of relief, the pain beyond anything he’d known, like someone had thrown liquid silver in his guts. He watched Billy pour a sixty-grain powder charge into one of the Colt’s chambers, followed by a wad of paper. The boy used a small built-in ramrod to seat a lead ball.

Ezekiel spent his last thought not on the horror of what might happen to Gloria, or his own inconceivable pain, or all the things he would not ever see or smell or taste again. He spent his last thought on his boy.

The sound of Gus’s laugh.

What it had felt like to cradle him.

The nape of his neck.

With the bore charged, Billy set about fitting a brass cap to the nipple in back of the cylinder.

You was the best thing. You and your mama, and I wished I’d knowed that when I coulda done somethin to preserve it.

Billy waded up to the rock where Ezekiel lay dying, leveled the nine-inch barrel between the man’s eyes. Ezekiel barely heard the hammer thumb back, because the possibility of heaven had dawned on him, and he was thinking how sweet and unexpected a surprise it would be to arrive there after all this, see Gus, sneak up on his boy, tickle his ribs, throw him in the air. And that laugh . . . Please, God, let me hear Gus laugh again if You’re real and have any regard—

THIRTY-THREE

OLord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before Thee. Let my prayer come before Thee.

The preacher lay shivering in a bank of snow at the base of the boulder field, so far beyond those innocuous, eloquent prayers he’d delivered to his congregation on Sunday mornings, beyond the decorum he’d always reserved for addressing his Savior. He could only manage a silent, desperate psalm.

Incline Thine ear unto my cry. For my soul is full of troubles.

In the distance, a horse snorted. Stephen raised his head, saw Oatha Wallace and Billy McCabe loping through the powder on their mounts, leading a train of burros down from the pass.

And my life draweth nigh unto the grave.

Stephen ducked under the bank and burrowed deep into the snow, taking the cape from his black greatcoat and draping it over his head to keep the powder from falling into his collar.

I am counted with them that go down into the pit. I am as a man that hath no strength.

The preacher sat motionless and buried, his back to the snowbank, watching Russell Ilg’s mare wandering between the boulders.

Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom Thou rememberest no more. And they are cut off from Thy hand.

He heard the tinkle of harness bells on the other side of the snowbank, no more than ten feet from where he sat.

Someone said, “Whoa now.”

He envisioned Billy and Oatha tugging at their reins.

“Reckon these are Ezekiel’s?” Oatha’s voice. They were studying his tracks.

“O-o-o-or maybe that horse yonder.”

Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.

“Naw, that horse come from farther up. These here are the tracks of a man.”

Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and Thou hast afflicted me with all Thy waves.

“I’ll climb down and check it out if ye want, Oatha.”

Stephen closed his eyes.

Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction. Lord, I have called daily upon Thee, I have stretched out my hands unto Thee.

“They was just the two a them, right?”

“Yeah, I think—”

“Think?”

“Th-th-th—”

“You little stutterin greener, you better—”

“They was just the two a them. I know it for a fact. And we saw the other’ns body back there.”