Abandon

FIFTY-TWO

U

nder calmer circumstances, Gloria might have noticed the sky—clouds striated with a thousand tones of orange, like you were staring up into the guts of an overripe peach, and some of them still bleeding pink curtains of snow.

But she couldn’t see anything through the window of tears.

Someone yelled her name.

Gloria stopped, turned back, looking downslope at the chapel far below, the clang of its bell echoing through the canyon.

The last of Abandon’s residents trudged up the web trail, the closest of them Emma Ilg, wrapped in a black manta, her purple gown bulging out of the bottom, encrusted with ice. Emma stopped below Gloria and hunched over to catch her breath in the thin air.

When she looked up, she said, “Have you seen Russ—What’s wrong?”

Gloria shook her head, tears streaming.

“Billy McCabe and Oatha Wallace . . . know ’em?”

“Know of them. Why?”

Gloria went to pieces. “I think they killed our husbands.”

Emma’s ruddy face turned cold, rigid. “No. Don’t you say that to me. Russ and Ezekiel are up ahead. They’re trying to find us—”

“Listen to me, Emma.”

“I will not hear—”

“Billy and Oatha murdered Mr. Packer last night and made off with his gold. That’s why our husbands rode up to the pass. But it’s been four hours and Zeke hasn’t come back to me.”

“How do you know they’re gone?”

“ ’Cause Billy came to my cabin and was on the verge of killin me before—”

“You’ve seen them dead?”

“No.”

“Then they aren’t. My husband’s up ahead.”

“Please, Emma—”

“Don’t speak another word to me!” Emma pushed her way up the trail, knocking Gloria down into the snow as she passed.

A ways up the mountain, a woman screamed.

“Al, get your fuckin hands off me,” Joss said.

“Come on, they’s children up ahead a you. Watch that mouth—”

“Don’t tell me how to be. You got these wrist irons too tight. They’re strangulatin my hands. And I need a brain tablet.”

“I’ll fix ’em when we get there and get you a smoke. Simmer down.” Joss glanced up toward the end of the canyon. With the storm having passed, she could finally see the steep white slope two miles south that led up to the Sawblade. She squinted her eyes, trying to raise the black specks zigzagging down like a line of warrior ants, thought she’d rather go it alone, take her chances in Abandon, than holed up with this miserable bunch of pilgrims.

Near the rimrock, the trail had become an icy staircase, stomped down and smoothed over by the passage of a hundred pairs of webs.

“How you expect me to climb with no hands?”

“Haul in your neck. I’m helpin you, ain’t I?”

Joss purposely tripped, and Al had to grab her under both elbows to keep her from sliding down the mountain.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “Can you climb ten more steps?”

As Joss struggled to her feet, her fingers grazed over the bowie knife jammed down into her canvas trousers, and she thought, It will be such a pleasure to stick this in you, you stackwad cocksucker.

Fifty feet back down the trail, Joss heard a woman scream.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“He rode up to the pass with Mr. Wallace, honey.”

“What for?”

“Don’t you worry about that.”

Bessie walked ahead of her daughter as they climbed the slope above town, her mind running in ten directions at once. The gold. The murders. Heathens riding down from the pass. They’d been delayed in getting to the chapel, because Billy had told them to go home first and pack for the trip to Silverton. But she was with him now, and despite everything, it felt right. He was her husband, after all. The Good Lord commanded that she obey him.

The trail steepened, and just ahead lay a series of icy steps that climbed the remaining distance up the cuesta to the rimrock.

“All right, Har, I need to hold your hand on this part.” Bessie turned around. “Harriet!” she screamed. “Harriet!” She couldn’t see anything downslope, standing high enough above town that a slice of the sun still lingered over the far side of the canyon.

“What’s wrong, ma’am?” An Englishman leading his wife and two daughters stopped on the trail just below.

“You seen my daughter? She’s yea high. Six years old. Curly black hair. She was right here with me not a second ago.”

“No, I sure haven’t seen—”

“Oh Jesus. Excuse me.” Bessie tried to scoot by, but the big bearded Englishman stretched his arm out to stop her.

“Ma’am, now you gotta keep climbing. We’re in terrible—”

“I’ve lost my daughter!”

“And someone’s gonna find her and they’ll bring her along.”

“Sir, please step out of my way.”

“You’re holding up the line.”

“Harriet! Harriet!”

As Bessie tried once more to step around him, he scooped her up, threw her over his shoulder, and continued up the steps toward the rimrock, Bessie flailing and screaming, the Englishman shushing her.

“We’re gonna get everyone safely inside, and if she isn’t there, I’ll go find her myself. That’s a promise.”

But Bessie’s desperate screaming drowned him out. She even surpassed the church bell until the mountain swallowed her.