Karen Memory

Chapter Twenty-one

I don’t know if it was the excitement that did it, but by the time we started our tiptoe across the icy, rutted skid yard to that shed Priya had quit shivering, but I was trembling like a marriage license in a young man’s hand. The skid yard was wide and open — it’d be a field of mud in spring and hard-baked dirt come summer — and all I could think was how the sky was graying out fast now and if it were me holed up in that shack waiting for some agent of a foreign power whom I expected to slip me some ill-gotted gold I’d be spending a whole lot of time checking outside the windows. But they was hung with burlap coffee bags for curtains — I could make out the printing through the bubbled glass panes — and not a one on our side twitched.

Maybe Bantle and his fellows was staring out the front. One if by land, two if by sea. Or do I got that backward?

The lean-to was dingy and dark and a blessed relief. Just not having the freezing rain drumming on my head was benediction enough, but the side wall and slanted roof cut the wind, too, and in the stillness Priya and my new little burrow felt almost warm by comparison. We huddled against the back wall on the hinge side of that door, where it would shade us if it opened unexpectedly. She pulled the Marshal’s coat out and I got under it with her. She weren’t shedding no appreciable warmth.

I didn’t care. She draped her arm over my shoulders and we crouched down, hugging our knees, and leaned in to the cracks between the logs to hear what we could hear.

There was some mud shoved in there in places, but overall they weren’t chinked so good and it hadn’t been reapplied recent. Little slivers of light shone out between ’em, honey warm and tantalizing. Priya and me, we tried to breathe shallow and not let our teeth chatter, because we could hear every footstep inside and sound travels in all directions. Except back up through the ceiling when your neighbor upstairs is getting up to acrobatics, if you know what I mean, but that’s just the goddamn perversity of the universe.

I’d still maybe harbored a small niggle of worry that we’d come all this way and weren’t going to find nothing except a winter watchman — especially when there was no means of transportation immediately apparent — but the first whisper of sound that filtered out with the warm air and firelight put paid to that. It didn’t do nothing to ease the twist in my guts, though, because it was Peter Bantle’s voice.

I flinched, and in flinching I noted that the icy rain had made my face stop hurting, because it started up again. Priya didn’t cringe at all. The man who can make Priya cringe ain’t been invented. And I believe the task would stretch even the Almighty’s ingenuity.

Bantle said, “If that yellow son of a bitch ain’t here in half an hour, he can whistle.”

Did that mean Nemo was an Indian after all? Or was I wrong and he was Chinese?

Another voice cut in, more educated and more accented. “For what he is paying us, he may be being as late as he wishes. I for one do not care to go back out into that rain.”

I glanced at Priya. She mouthed something in the dimness. It could have been Scarlet.

I nodded. I guess the son of a bitch weren’t dead after all.

The third voice was familiar, too. Horatio Standish. “Why don’t I make us some coffee, gentlemen? I brought cornmeal and flour and bacon. Figure if I start up a pan of grub, that’ll bring him.”

Some things are just universal.

Like the known scientific fact that the colder and wetter you are, the better bacon smells frying. I tell you true, if a woman could die of smells, I wouldn’t be here today. There was scraping and mixing sounds, too, and sizzling. I thought even Priya was salivating, and she don’t even like bacon.

We pressed up against the log wall and convinced ourselves that some of that warmth was soaking through it. I tried not to smell bacon while I was deciding if we should kick something over and run now — the conversation weren’t too edifying — or if we should wait for Nemo to get here and try to scoop up the whole mess of ’em.

Of course, I was supposed to be waiting for the Marshal’s signal. But he sure were taking his own sweet time about whatever preparations he had in mind. And I don’t mind admitting I had an itch to hurry things along some.

I had just about decided that the sensible thing to do would be to slap irons on Bantle, Scarlet, and Standish — I felt maybe a little bad about Standish, but only a little; he did choose to associate himself with Bantle — and then for us to inhabit the cabin in our turn and lie in wait for this Nemo, when Bantle started in to talking again.

“Horaz, come over here and look at this.”

There was a rustle of paper, some footsteps. I tried to press my eye to the chink in the wall and see what was going on, but there was nothing to be seen except light and blurs. I heard Standish make a humfing sound, and then there was nothing.

“Help me move this table,” Bantle said. A great scraping followed, coupled with some muffled cursing I could not understand. In Russian, I thought, because that was Scarlet’s voice.

If they was setting up the table and chairs, then they must expect Nemo to be coming any minute. Either that or they was getting antsy with waiting.

Well, I could relate. Still no owls. And less of my heart hammering on against the inside of my ribs, despite being huddled in a corner of that shed like a mouse in a loose box, hoping not to get stomped. Still, the waiting was like to be the death of me. I wondered if maybe Marshal Reeves had made his owl call, and we’d just not heard it through the rain and our eavesdropping on Bantle and his fellows. Maybe we should start our turn as bait—

The back door of the log cottage busted open so hard it bounced off my shoulder and knocked me on my rump. A harsh glare of light followed. I scrambled away, knowing that there was no way I could avoid getting seen but hoping maybe to distract from Priya. When I looked up, Horaz Standish was framed in the door.

He had a pistol in each hand, and both of ’em was trained at me.

I rolled on my side, thinking maybe I could sprint out the open side of the shed and make for the trees and maybe our plan could still work. And if nothing else, I could lead ’em off Priya. But as I gathered my legs under me, I came face to boot with Peter Bantle, standing with the rain dripping off the groove in his hat brim, scowling down at me. He had his glove on, and it was sparking and spitting. Me, I wouldn’t have trusted that much electricity in the rain. The sizzle turned my stomach and made my insides feel liquidy and slick.

The burn on my cheek flared into fresh pain, just at the sight of it.

Bantle leveled a pistol, too, and sighed like I was the biggest exasperation he ever met. “Put the Peacemaker down,” he instructed.

I just then realized it was still in my hand.

I know I should of leveled it and shot him where he stood. But I honestly think if I had, you wouldn’t be hearing this story today. Standish and Bantle had me dead to rights, and even if I dropped Bantle, well … Horaz Standish’s forbearance was unlikely to weather my shooting his boss.

I stretched out my arm and laid the gun on the packed earth, fingertip reach away.

Bantle shook his head. “You whores really are blamed fools. Get that other one out from behind the door, please, Scarlet?”

Scarlet crossed behind Standish, more’s the pity — I would of liked him to foul Standish’s line of fire — and went around the door. He was a medium-sized fellow only, compact, but his arms were as big around as one of Priya’s thighs. And he was as strong as he looked; Priya kicked and fought as he drew her out, but she couldn’t even shake his grip on her wrist. She bit him a good one — I saw blood — and he stepped on my leg fighting her, but before too long he twisted her arm behind her back and gave her the Spanish walk out of the corner.

She never said a word. But there was more light now, and she caught my eye. The toss of her chin told me she’d kill all three of them right now, if she had the means. Though I was chattering with the cold, I agreed with her silent threat 1,006 percent.

Standish lowered his gun. “These girls are soaked to the bone. Let’s get them inside, before they freeze stiff.”

“They’d be less trouble to me under such circumstances,” Bantle said.

“I’ve got a use for at least one of ’em if you don’t,” Standish replied.

Bantle snorted. But he reached down — without holstering his pistol — and though I cringed away, he hauled me to my feet by the hair.