“Run,” Nick growled. J. D. eased his hand away from the saddle and took his foot out of the stirrup. “All right. I guess I’ll be going.” With that, he sauntered away from the camp. As soon as he put some distance between himself and Nick, J. D. broke into a run and quickly disappeared.
Taking the rifle from J. D.’s saddle, Nick slung the weapon over his shoulder and walked to where Joseph was standing. “That’s a hell of a way to get the most out of someone.”
It took a few seconds before Joseph even acknowledged Nick’s presence. When he did, it was only with an off-handed, “Huh?”
“The founder of this feast here was holding out on us, but he spilled his guts after that little display of yours.”
“I wanted to kill him, Nick.”
“Really?” Nick said sarcastically. “I couldn’t tell.”
Joseph looked back toward the campfire. “Where is he?”
“With the speed he was running, probably getting close to Old Mexico right about now.”
“Running?”
“I wasn’t about to give him a horse so he could catch up to his friends before we did.”
Chuckling under his breath, Joseph said, “You should have just let me kill him rather than leave him stranded out here.”
“He’s got a better chance than you think,” Nick said. “Outlaw trails like this one have all kinds of surprises. There’s always a few cabins or caves or something like that for them to use if they get lost or followed.”
“You know an awful lot about that.”
“Yeah.”
Turning away from the fire, Joseph looked back out toward the wide-open stretch of rugged land to the north. “You know an awful lot about a lot of things.”
It wasn’t a coincidence that there was no better-known trail established through there. The land was a harsh mix of jagged rocks, a few clusters of trees and uneven slopes. In the subdued light of dusk, however, those edges were hidden and the wildness of the land could be seen in a less threatening way.
“Who did you lose, Nick?”
“What?”
Joseph glanced over to him and then looked back to the landscape. “You talk about things you’ve seen, but you’ve never said what happened, exactly.”
“There’s not enough time to say it all,” Nick replied. “Even if there was, I wouldn’t want to dredge it all up again.”
“I want to stop thinking about my wife and my daughter,” Joseph said quietly. “I know that sounds terrible, but I just wish I could put them out of my head. Just for a few minutes so I can rest.”
“Now’s the time to rest. Once you do, those memories will…” Nick winced and then corrected himself. “Actually, they won’t ever fade, but they’ll be easier to bear. Carrying out what you want to do when those wounds are fresh won’t end in anything good.”
Although he could tell that Joseph wasn’t ready to turn around and go back to his son, Nick could at least tell that the other man was listening.
“You see this?” Nick asked as he held out what remained of the fingers of one hand. “This, and a lot worse, was done by a vicious bastard I used to know. He led a group of killers who called themselves the Vigilance Committee. They’re the ones who cut me up and shot pieces of me like I was target practice.”
Nick needed to steel himself before continuing. “There were some folks that were kind enough to take me in after I was left for dead. I knew those folks would be in trouble if it got out that they’d helped me. Well, word did get out, and they were in trouble from a group of lawmen who took orders from the Committee.
“The woman who cared for me…her name was Sue. I can still see her face every now and then. At the time, she was the prettiest thing in my world. She said that everything would sort itself out whether I fought for it or not. Of course I didn’t listen. In fact, I took off and killed enough lawmen to put a price on my head that I’ll never shake. All I wanted was to get my hands on those bastards or anyone connected to them in any way. All I wanted was to make them hurt, spill their blood, kill them or anyone they loved, just to pay them back for what they done. Sound familiar?”
Joseph nodded slowly. “Sounds to me like they had it coming.”
“When it was all said and done, I rode off to visit the Committee directly and figured those good folks who cared for me were better off if they never saw me again.
“I checked in on them some time later and they were gone.”
“Where’d they go?” Joseph asked.
Nick slowly shook his head. “I don’t know. Nobody knew. Their house was cleaned out. Their things were gone. The man and his wife…their children…they were all gone. I’d like to think they headed to greener pastures, but I don’t know if that was the case. I do know that I didn’t make one damn bit of difference. The Committee came anyhow and took over just like they did in Virginia City. They rode in like some kind of goddamn army. That family I wanted to protect was driven out…or worse. They might have been killed, or maybe Red made an example of them to discourage anyone else from taking in a wanted man.”
Nick’s eyes drifted toward the empty land. Rather than linger on the muted edges of rock or the trees huddling together to survive, he looked up to the stars that glittered overhead. “I was one of Red’s examples. Thinking about those good folks and their daughters going through half of what I did tears me up worse than any blade.”
When he looked at Joseph again, the steely resolve was back in Nick’s eyes. His face looked as if it had been carved from a slab of granite. “There’s plenty of folks out there who deserve plenty of punishment, but all the blood you spill stays on your hands. It doesn’t help tip any scales. Just remember that, no matter how bad things are right now, they could be worse. You’re alive. So’s your boy. Things will work themselves out whether we fight for it or not. Don’t fight to make them worse.”
Joseph nodded and said, “I just want to make certain they work out the way they should.”
“We’ll just have to see about that.”
TWENTY-THREE
J. D. had built one hell of a campfire. It burned hot enough to cook Nick and Joseph’s supper and kept burning through the rest of the night. As the first rays of the sun broke through the next morning, both men were up and saddling their horses. When he saw Nick standing for a little too long at Kazys’s side, Joseph walked closer and spotted the bottle in Nick’s hand.
Nick turned and held the bottle out. “You want a sip? It takes the chill out of your bones.”
Taking the bottle, Joseph shook it back and forth to watch the clear liquid swirl inside. He assumed it wasn’t water and took a sniff from the top just to be certain. His suspicions were correct and the liquor’s scent scorched the back of his nostrils. “What the hell is that?”
“Vodka. It’s a taste I picked up from my father. Try some.”
Reluctantly, Joseph put the bottle to his lips and tilted it back. At first, the liquid was cold and even refreshing. Then, the fire hit him as though someone had flipped a match down his throat. The heat traced a path all they way down to his stomach and forced a wheezing breath up from the bottom of Joseph’s lungs.
Nick watched with a grin and took the bottle back. He kept right on smiling as he took another healthy sip for himself.
“You drink that?” Joseph huffed. “Seems like it’d be put to better use cleaning out a gun barrel.”
“I never thought of that.”
“Just keep it away from me.”
Nick replaced the cork in the top of the bottle, wrapped it in a towel and carefully set it in his saddlebag. “You just don’t know any better. This stuff is hard to find. Most folks would rather drink whiskey that tastes more like kerosene or beer that was brewed in some saloon owner’s outhouse.”
“Do you have any kerosene?” Joseph asked. “I could use it to wash this taste out of my mouth.”
