to go last minute.”
“And you called me a black liar.”
“And I stand by the claim. Christ.” Ezekiel winced.
Oatha tossed his double-barreled hammer shotgun to Billy, waded toward Ezekiel, and knelt before him in the snow.
“Nathan was your brother.”
“My little brother.”
“What the hell. Don’t matter much now, does it? I didn’t wanna ride with ’em, but they caught up to me on the trail to Abandon in early October.”
“It was four a you?”
“That’s right. Started snowin the second afternoon, and it didn’t stop for a week. We’d only packed provisions for three days a travel and we was hungry by the time the snow quit. Didn’t have no webs. Ten miles from anywhere. Six feet a powder on the ground. Imagine tryin to walk any considerable distance in this shit.
“We tried to hunt, but all the game had gone down to winter in the foothills. Never saw so much as a rabbit.
“We was camped at timberline in a stand a dead spruce, and come October’s end, we was starvin. One man run off. Horses died and froze. Circumstances was dire. The other men had the look a death about ’em already. I weren’t far behind. There was enough snow melted, we coulda walked out if we just had a little strength.
“One mornin, I took my shotgun, so weak, I could hardly stand. Ways out from camp, I fired it into a tree. Started yellin I’d shot a elk. They come a-runnin. Hootin. Hollerin.
“McClurg arrived first, and I shot him. Nathan realized what was happenin, what we had to do, but he didn’t want no part of it. I was left with no choice but to kill him.
“I didn’t cook your brother, though. McClurg was plumpest, least gant up. I roasted his ass. Had both sides. Got my strength up, stowed everthing in a old bear den, and broke camp next mornin. Walked into Abandon three days later.”
Billy stared at Oatha, mouth agape, broken teeth showing, looking more than a little mystified. “You et a man’s backside?”
“Weren’t no face-lickin Thanksgivin dinner. I was starvin, Billy. And this don’t concern you anyhow. Just thought the man deserved to know his brother’s fate.”
In the midst of a cloud, mist blowing past and a few stray flakes of snow, Ezekiel was overrun by a coldness that settled so deep inside him, he knew he’d never be rid of it. He was dying and he thought of Nathan dying, felt a strange connection to his brother in that moment, wondered if he’d felt this alone in that moment before Oatha murdered him.
Ezekiel’s respiration slowed. He tasted blood in his teeth, felt it trickling from the corner of his mouth. He had a terrible thirst, and he trembled with cold as he looked up at Oatha.
“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 fuckin 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.”
