spearhead beneath the skin.
“If you do,” Zak finally said, “it’ll be the last thing you call out.”
“You don’t scare me none,” Tolliver said.
“You’re going to hear two things, Tolliver,” Zak said.
“Yeah?”
“One is the sound of my Walker Colt calling out your name. The other is old Angel Gabe blowing his trumpet, calling you to Judgment Day.”
Tolliver snarled, uttered an oath under his breath. He came up into a crouch, his hand diving for his pistol. Danny sat there, trying to hold back his bowels, his face drained of color, leaving only the white stain of fear sprawling on his features.
Zak didn’t take his eyes off Tolliver as his fingers grasped the butt of his pistol. Tolliver was pulling his own pistol from its holster. In that wink of eternity, it seemed as if it took hours for the barrel of the pistol to clear the sheath. In that split second, Tolliver’s face mirrored his final thought: He was going to make it.
Zak’s pistol seemed to leap into his hand, and when he thumbed back the hammer, the click made Danny jump inside his skin. Tolliver’s barrel came clear and his thumb pressed down on the hammer to cock the single action.
Zak’s Colt bellowed, spewing a bright orange flame, unburnt powder, and a .44 caliber lead projectile from its muzzle. The roar of the explosion was like a single thunderclap drowning out the sizzle of the bullet as it sped faster than the speed of sound, making a crack like a bullwhip just before it smashed into the center of Tolliver’s chest with all the impact of a pile driver.
Tolliver’s finger closed around the trigger, then went slack as he was slammed back against the wall of the adobe, a jet of blood spurting from his chest, a crimson fountain that drenched his belly and the crotch of his trousers. Danny put his arms up over his head and ducked as if to ward off the next shot that he was sure would come.
Tolliver slumped against the adobe. His pistol slipped from his hand and made a dull thud as it struck the dirt. He stared a thousand yards without seeing anything but a blur, an afterglow of orange light burning into his brain.
Danny swallowed his tobacco. It made him sick and he pitched forward, vomiting it back up, along with the moil of his supper and whatever else was inside his tortured stomach.
Zak walked over, picked up Tolliver’s pistol, stuck it inside his belt. He then lifted Grubb’s pistol from its holster as Danny went through the throes of the dry heaves.
“I’m leaving you two horses. One for yourself, one to pack out that dead man there. You tell Ferguson and Trask I’m coming for them. And I’ll ask you one more time, Danny, how many more of these line shacks between here and Tucson? The ones Ferguson is using.”
A watery-eyed Danny looked up at Zak, wiped vomit from his chin.
“Two more, that I know of. Hell, I don’t even know who you are,” he croaked.
“The name’s Cody.”
Zak walked inside the adobe and kicked over the stove, threw the lantern onto the coals. Then he walked out, past Danny, and climbed into the saddle. He rode down to the corral, tied Nox to a pole, went inside. He ran all but two of the horses out and closed the gate. He looked up toward the flaming adobe and saw Danny pulling Tolliver’s body away from the conflagration.
Zak untied the reins, pulled himself back up into the saddle.
He rode off through a shimmering band of firelight, into the night, following the wagon tracks. He heard the horses galloping away and the neighs of those left behind.
In the distance, across the vastness of night, the coyotes loosed their ribbons of song. And the moon rose over the horizon, bright and full, its shining face lighting his way long after he left the burning adobe behind.
And he felt as if his father were riding alongside him, speaking to him in the Ogallala tongue, the language of his mother.
Chapter 10
