Abandon

THIRTY-ONE

E

zekiel walked into the boulder field and hunkered down at the base of a broken pitch of rock. He reached into his slicker and pulled the box of .44–40’s from an inner pocket of his sack coat, tore it open, and slid five cartridges into the loading gate.

With the wind subsided and his horse no longer braying, what struck him now was the silence, his senses heightened, everything distilled. The smell of wet rock and gunpowder. The sound of snow falling on his hat. His heart thumping like it meant to bust out of his chest. Burning cold spreading through the left side of his face.

He heard distant whispering, got to his feet, stepped out from behind the rock formation. What lay before him on the gentle downslope reminded Ezekiel of a snowy labyrinth—countless boulders of varying size, some no bigger than a barrel, others rivaling wagons and cabins, bunched together in spots, spaced out in others, and a million places to hide. For a fact, Oatha and Billy had deadwood.

Twenty feet ahead, he spotted what he’d been looking for—tracks in the otherwise smooth, unbroken snow. He waded through the powder, light-headed.

After three strides, he froze. From behind a table-topped boulder came an exhalation. He brought the carbine’s butt plate flush against his shoulder as something edged out from the rock.

He nearly shot a rawboned burro with missing ear tips, buried to its neck and laden with an empty cantia. It stood watching him through large dull eyes.

He moved on through the boulder field.

It had stopped snowing, and that seemed to magnify the silence.

He came to the tracks. Two sets. The snow so deep he had to squat down to find which direction the boot prints pointed, now pushing forward again with what he knew was deluded confidence.

Behind any one of the hundreds of rocks, they were laying for him, and this would all be decided by dumb luck: who saw who first.

The sound of a block of snow calving off a boulder drew his attention, and when he turned back to the tracks, a slouch hat poked out of the snow thirty feet ahead.

The carbine bucked against his shoulder and he lunged behind the nearest rock as a shotgun exploded the silence.

The shooter had disappeared when he peeked around the corner, Ezekiel figuring he’d ducked back under the snow to reload.

He sighted the spot where he’d seen the hat. Had there been only one, he’d have felt at ease staying indefinitely, pinning the man down, waiting for him to lift his head again. But the prospect of a standoff made him nervous with two men in play.

As he debated what to do, he heard the unmistakable snick.

Perhaps five yards behind and a little to the left.

Thought he was dead.

No sound like the hammer of a six-gun going back.

“Y-y-y-y-you go on and, and, and, and, and throw that rifle away.”

Ezekiel remained crouched in the snow, leaning against the rock.

“Swear to God. I-I-I got a bead drawed on the back a your head.”

“All right.” But Ezekiel didn’t throw his carbine aside. He kept a firm grip on the forend stock, a finger in the trigger guard, and turned slowly until he faced the boy standing waist-deep in snow.

Ezekiel had hoped to see the revolver trembling in Billy’s hand, but the enormous Walker Colt was steady and leveled on his chest like a small cannon. “That was some shootin back there,” Ezekiel said. “Head shot from what? Fifty, sixty yards?”

“Told you, throw that artillery down.”

Billy’s face twitched as if someone had placed hooks in the left corner of his mouth and was yanking them with a string. Ezekiel found the boy’s eyes, didn’t like the jitteriness he saw, would have preferred two rounds of ice. At least you saw it coming that way.

“We’re neighbors, Billy. Our wives are friends.” As he spoke, Ezekiel let the carbine’s barrel ease down. Another few inches, he’d take the boy’s head off. “You got a nice family in Bessie and Harriet, and I believe that shot that kilt the Doc was a accident. Now, I can’t speak for your partner, but your bark ain’t this hard.”

“Well, Mr.Curtice, guess you don’t know me so good after all.”