Abandon

pulsed out of a small hole in the center of his chest and ran down his washboard stomach, pooling in his belly button, spilling over, diverting at his waistband. He looked up at Abigail as if it were her fault, then fell over into the wet leaves.

She ran her hands along his sides, felt a bulge in the left pocket of the parka. Working the zipper open, her hands closing on her father’s Ruger, she transferred the revolver to her jacket, then slipped the machine pistol’s nylon strap over Isaiah’s head and stepped behind the tree as another round zipped past her ear and severed a sapling.

She swung out with a two-handed grip, and squeezed the eight-pound trigger.

Quinn stepped behind a tree as the Glock bucked, sprayed the forest, pushing Abigail back with the force of a high-pressure water hose, a stream of brass casings arcing over her right shoulder, flames shooting out the compensator ports, the machine pistol vacating the thirty-three-round magazine before it even crossed her mind to let up on the trigger.

She stumbled forward as the slide locked back, the gun impotent.

Abigail surveyed the aspen grove—no movement, no sound save for the hiss of rain and snow falling on the Glock’s smoking suppressor.

She heard a soft whistle behind her, looked back, saw blood boiling and sucking back into the hole in Isaiah’s chest.

She threw down the machine pistol and began to run.

1893

EIGHTY-TWO

 L

ana standing by the living room window, staring through frosted glass at the crowd of carolers come to serenade her this Christmas night, their faces awash in candlelight, Silent night, holy night, a figure stumbling up the alameda toward the front door, Darkness flies, all is light, the choir faltering, Feel free to get the fuck off my yard, the carolers dispersing, Lana retreating to the Steinway, seating herself at the piano bench, thinking, My playing soothes him, perhaps some Brahms, the keys tinkling icily as the front door opens, slams, the meter quickening with her heartbeat as his boots pound the hardwood floor, his footsteps and the piquant waft of cactus juice moving toward—

The stillness shook her from the dream.

Lana opened her eyes—starry and cold beyond reason, the horse standing in snow to its stomach, wind-broke and panting.

She was high above the timberline, between two promontories that seemed vaguely familiar, masses of rock and ice in black relief against the navy sky.

She realized she’d seen them two and half years ago through the dusty window of a coach that summer afternoon she’d first made the long trip to Abandon, though the wilderness had looked quite different then—greened out and only pockets of dirty snow in the shadowed mountain flanks. This was the crest of the main wagon trail, a twelve-thousand-foot pass between a pair of knobs collectively named the Teats.

Having slept with her head drooped the last several hours, she winced from a neck crick as she assessed the moon’s position in the sky, estimating the hour to be approaching midnight. Thank God the horse seemed to know the way, although she wondered how much farther she could push this salado. But what was the alternative? Dismount, unfasten the apron straps, and spread out the bedroll? Star-pitch in six feet of snow?

Falling asleep on the way out of town, her feet had tingled with cold. Now they hung in the stirrups, disturbingly innocuous, a complete lack of sensation that she hoped was warmth.

Her hands ached, which she took for a good sign, balled up into fists inside the mittens to conserve heat. She had a suspicion it was lethally cold, but in the absence of wind, the thirty-below air temperature felt less pronounced.

Lana turned in the saddle, looked back the way she’d come—a smooth snowy slope bright as day under the moon, bruised only by horse tracks that more resembled the delicate indentation of a sandpiper’s footprints on a beach.

Miles away, she could see the opening to Abandon’s box canyon, the town itself hidden from view.

Again she traced the path her horse had taken, following the tracks five hundred feet back down the slope, across a narrow bench, then one last dip toward timberline, where at that moment one of the trees broke away from the forest and moved upslope.

Stephen Cole, she thought.

She attempted to gauge the distance—a mile, mile and a half at most.

He’s following my tracks.

She looked at what lay ahead—it appeared as if the trail descended gradually over the next few miles, then dropped into the forest, where it paralleled the course of what she recalled was a river in the summertime.

Far, far on—ten, maybe fifteen miles beyond this drainage at whose headwaters she stood—something glowed in a distant valley.

Silverton.

It seemed impossibly far.

Lana darling. Could I steal your attention?

Her fingers rest on the ivory keys, piano bench squeaking as he eases down beside her, his breath heavy with a strange-smelling smoke and soured by tequila, maybe the better part of a jug, though she doesn’t know for sure. He can hold the liquor of three high lonesomes.