Robert B. Parker's Revelation Page 8

  23

  I waited, listening, then Virgil called out, “Got him.”

  “That’d be it,” I said, calling out from the back hallway.

  “So it seems,” Virgil called back.

  “Skillman dead?” I called.

  Virgil waited some before he replied.

  “No,” he said. “But I got him, he’s down . . . What about the other two?”

  “Eight-gauge.”

  I moved out into the main room and, sure enough, lying dead were Dekalb and Wythe. The double-ought from my eight-gauge made a mess of both men and the room. I could see Virgil out the front door as he walked to Skillman, who was lying flat on his back in the middle of the street. Virgil kept his Colt pointed at his head as he neared. When he got close he kicked a Colt that was in the dirt beside Skillman off to the side.

  Skillman moved a bit and looked up to Virgil.

  “Providing you live, Mr. Skillman, we’ll be taking you back to Cibola.”

  “Cibola,” Skillman said with a moan. “Who are you?”

  “Marshal Virgil Cole,” Virgil said, then looked over to me. “Bring a lamp out here, Everett.”

  I looked to the bar, where a barkeep, the heavyset woman, and another woman, a small, skinny gal with big eyes and stringy hair, were all huddled together, looking at me.

  I turned my collar and showed them my badge.

  “We’re U.S. Marshals, these men here were both escaped convicts, serving time for murder. The one on his back out there in the street is the same, also an escaped killer.”

  The barkeep nodded then reached up, grabbing a lamp that was hanging just above his head, and handed it to me.

  I walked out into the street to Virgil. Skillman was on his back, looking up at him. When I got close with the light it was clear Skillman was very much alive, holding his bleeding right shoulder.

  “Sit up,” Virgil said.

  Skillman winced in pain but did as Virgil asked.

  “Shit,” Skillman said.

  “You hit anyplace else?” Virgil said.

  Skillman looked down at his body with a disgusted look on his face, then back to Virgil and me and shook his head.

  “No,” he said.

  “What happened out here?” I said.

  “Right after you started off toward the back, Skillman here come walking out to his horse there, getting something from the saddlebag.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Oh, we know your name and your prison number,” Virgil said, then looked to me. “I told him to stop, and he turned and fired on me.”

  Virgil looked back to Skillman.

  “Didn’t you?”

  Skillman just looked at the dirt between his legs.

  “When the gunning started up inside, I took a step back around the corner and Skillman here managed to get mounted and took off.”

  “He thought he could get gone?” I said, looking at Skillman.

  “He did.”

  The bay horse Skillman had been riding came walking back faithful-like, as if Skillman was his owner, and stopped. He looked at us sort of expectantly. I reached for the reins as he took a short step back.

  “Easy,” I said.

  I got ahold of the bridle, then I looked to Virgil.

  “Nobody was interested in going back to Cibola,” I said.

  “No,” Virgil said as he opened the loading gate on his Colt and let the spent casings drop.

  “Kind of what we figured,” I said.

  “Was,” he said.

  Virgil reloaded his Colt and slid it back in his holster.

  “What were you getting out of this here saddlebag, Mr. Skillman?” Virgil said as he moved toward the bay.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Virgil said.

  “A cigar is all . . . I was gonna have me a cigar.”

  Virgil opened the bag and looked inside.

  “I got them on the way here . . . I . . . I was saving ’em,” he said.

  Virgil pulled out a newspaper that was folded around three cigars. He smelled one, then wrapped them up and put them back in the bag.

  “Saving them for what?”

  “I don’t know . . . A good time, I guess.”

  Virgil looked to me, then moved back to Skillman.

  “Think your good times are done, Mr. Skillman.”

  Skillman remained looking at the dirt.

  “Up,” Virgil said.

  Skillman did not move.

  Virgil nudged him with his boot and said, “Get up.”

  Skillman just looked at him.

  “Now,” Virgil said. “Let’s go.”

  Virgil got Skillman’s good arm and helped him to his feet, then pointed to Lavern’s.

  “Inside,” Virgil said.

  Skillman was a little wobbly but managed to walk back to Lavern’s. A handful of onlookers drifted toward Lavern’s.

  “This is marshal work,” I said, looking to the people gathering. “Everybody go back to what you were doing. Go on, everyone . . . go on.”

  When we got back inside Lavern’s, Skillman stopped when he saw Wythe and Dekalb dead on the floor.

  “Goddamn,” he said.

  “And then some,” Virgil said as he pulled out a chair. “Sit.”

  Skillman stared at the dead men as he took a seat.

  Virgil looked around the room. There were three whores sitting on the stairs, peering out between the railings like curious alley cats.

  “Don’t imagine there is a doc in the town?” Virgil said to the barkeep and the two women next to him.

  “Not really,” he said. “Me and Lavern here have done as much mending of the hurt as anybody else ’round here.”

  The big woman who had previously been sitting with the men was no doubt Lavern, the namesake of the establishment. She moved out and around the bar and looked down to Skillman sitting slumped in the chair, then back to us.

  “Most men that come through here are good men,” she said.

  Virgil nodded a bit.

  “They ain’t most.”

  She stared at Virgil for a moment, then moved closer to Skillman. He raised his head, looking at her. His eyes were red and full of tears. She walked around him and looked at the back of his shoulder. Then she circled around to his front, opened his shirt a little, and examined his shoulder wound.

  “You shot anyplace else?” she said.

  Skillman shook his head.

  Lavern looked over to the skinny woman with the big eyes. “Lucy, put some water on to boil and fetch some clean rags, salt, and liniment.”

  The skinny gal nodded and moved off through an open door behind the bar.

  Lavern put her palms on her hips and looked to Virgil and me.

  “We never know who is who here,” she said. “Not really.”

  She pointed to Wythe.

  “The old fellow there I met a long time ago, right here, when we first opened this place. He used to come in now and again, but then he stopped coming. I guess now I know why . . . I had no idea he was a convicted murderer and damn sure no idea until now that he was an escaped convicted murderer. I talked to him for a good while tonight. He seemed pleasant enough, odd but pleasant and . . . well he never said . . .”

  “No,” Virgil said, “don’t imagine he did.”

  24

  It turned out the bullet that entered Skillman’s shoulder did minimal damage both on its way in and on its way out. He hung his head low with the look of a man knowing he would for certain be tried for the murders of the mill workers in Yaqui and most likely hanged for his actions, but Skillman was good to ride.

  The following morning we got some help from a couple of local hands and we went about the task of burying Wythe and Dekalb in shallow graves. When we finished, we stopped by Lavern’s on our way out to let her know that prison officials or next of kin might come and exhume the dead in the near future.

  “And if not?” Lavern said.

  “If not,” Virgil sai
d, “may they do their best not to rot in hell too quickly.”

  We mounted up and departed Vadito with Skillman and the other two stolen horses in tow and headed toward Yaqui. We had Skillman to return to Cibola, and since Yaqui was en route between Cibola and us, we figured to collect Dobbin, the other convict wounded in the shootout at the Yaqui sawmill.

  We rode for the day, and as we did, Skillman never said a word. He sat slumped in his saddle as if he had no more life left in him. When it started to get dark we stopped for the evening and made camp in a dry red-rock area not far from the railroad tracks that led to Yaqui.

  We fed Skillman, then redressed his shoulder wound. He was in pain but was not losing blood, and the salve Lavern used was doing the job. We got him back into a clean shirt, put his jacket back on him, then moved him to the edge of our campsite and locked him to the base of a thick piñon with a single handcuff and chain. We left him with a bedroll and a canteen. He could move some, drink water, and lie down, but if he wanted to run off he’d have to uproot a twenty-foot-tall tree.

  About an hour after sunset Virgil and I sat on a huge rock and drank some whiskey. The wide, clear night sky stretched out over us like a deep blue blanket full of pinholes.

  Virgil leaned back on the rock with his cup of whiskey resting on his stomach and after a long moment of not talking said, “Hear that?”

  I listened.

  “What?”

  “Train.”

  I listened some more.

  “Now I do.”

  “I guess shooting that eight-gauge all these years has taken its toll.”

  I nodded.

  “That and the cannons of my youth.”

  We sat listening to the sound of the thumping steam engine chugging rhythmically in the distance as it got closer and closer. Then we saw the beam of the engine’s light sweeping across the land in front of us as the train turned and started thudding its way toward us.

  “Here she comes,” Virgil said.

  We watched as the train came toward us, its light getting brighter and the thumping sound of the engine getting louder and louder. Then we could see the cars, and inside the cars, the seated passengers.

  We could feel the tamping vibration of the engine now, and no sooner was the train upon us than it passed quickly and left us again in the dark. We listened for an extended moment as the pounding cadence of the locomotive slowly faded away.

  We sat in silence for a while.

  “Makes you wonder,” I said. “Where they’re all going.”

  “And why?”

  I thought about that for a moment, the necessities of where and the curiosities of why.

  “A lot of people coming and going these days,” I said.

  “Damn sure are,” Virgil said.

  “Not like it used to be.”

  “No,” Virgil said. “It ain’t.”

  “Remember when you’d never see anybody?” I said.

  “I do.”

  “Now there is somebody everywhere, it seems,” I said.

  Virgil nodded.

  “With something they got to do.”

  “Or someplace they got to go,” I said.

  “Needing to get there,” Virgil said.

  “And need to get,” I said. “Get this and get that.”

  Virgil nodded a little.

  “Saving for a good time,” he said.

  “You wonder,” I said, “just what it will all lead to?”

  “Better not to,” Virgil said.

  “There was a time the Mississippi felt like the edge of the world.”

  “Every day,” Virgil said. “There is a little bit more of something.”

  We sat without talking as we listened to a faraway coyote.

  “Times are changing right before our eyes, Everett.”

  “We can still get lost,” I said.

  “We can,” he said.

  Virgil looked down to Skillman sitting up with his back to the tree.

  “We damn sure can,” he said again. Then, without saying another word, Virgil got up. He moved down off the rock and walked over to where our saddles were. He leaned down by the saddles for a moment, then walked over to Skillman. He handed Skillman a cigar, lit a match, and cupped his hand around it as Skillman drew on the cigar.

  25

  Embers skittered off the waning campfire from a stiff bone-dry breeze that kicked up through the night. The wind whistled through the piñons and chaparral. Virgil was up, out of his bedroll with his Colt in hand, looking toward our animals.

  I lifted my head from my saddle seat that I used as a pillow and reached for my eight-gauge.

  “What?” I said. “What is it?”

  “Don’t know,” he said.

  “Horses are damn sure spooked,” Virgil said.

  I looked over to see Skillman move a little. He sat up in his bedroll and looked over to us. Besides the train that had come through and the occasional yapping of a coyote, the evening had been quiet and peaceful.

  “Get ready,” Virgil said.

  I sat up and looked about in the dark, thinking maybe some critter had sniffed his way to our camp and was agitating our horses. All the grub that would attract animals was stashed in an oilcloth bag and hanging ten feet above camp by a rope draped over a tall evergreen so as to keep such pests away.

  “Wind, maybe,” I said. “Blowing like a son of a bitch.”

  “Don’t think so,” Virgil said.

  Our horses were tied on a head-high Dutchman picket, close to camp. It was dark, but there was a quarter-moon and we could see well enough to know the horses were good and restless about something.

  From the reach of the moon I figured it was near midnight. I gathered up my eight-gauge and moved toward the picket when I heard a horse blow off in the distance.

  “You hear that, Virgil?”

  “I heard it.”

  I backed up a few steps toward Virgil and cocked my eight-gauge.

  “Damn sure somebody out there,” I said.

  “Is.”

  “Could be them,” I said. “Or some of them?”

  “By God,” Virgil said.

  We waited in silence for a time before we heard a man call from the dark. The voice cut through the steady breeze.

  “We got you boxed in and outnumbered. Lay aside any goddamn thing you got to fight with and give yourself up or you will be killed.”

  Virgil looked at me.

  “Sounds like Stringer,” he said.

  “Does.”

  “Do it,” the man said. “Or consider being dead and gone.”

  “That you, Stringer?” Virgil called.

  There was a bit of silence, then we heard him call back loudly, “Cole?”

  “It is.”

  “Goddamn,” Stringer shouted. “Coming in.”

  Stringer was once a deputy of Yaqui, but he’d outlasted the others and was now Yaqui’s top-ranking official. He’d been a good lawman and a good friend of ours through the years and he was someone we trusted.

  He barked out loudly as he approached, “Boys, stay put, stay where you are, I’m going in.”

  In a few moments, big Sheriff Stringer walked into our camp with two of his deputies lagging behind him. They were pulling their horses and carrying rifles.

  Stringer was a tall man with a full mustache and was never without his bone-handle long-barreled Colt, which he wore butt forward on his left.

  “Virgil,” he said.

  “By God,” Virgil said.

  Stringer shook his head some as he walked closer to us.

  “Everett.”

  “Hello, Stringer,” I said.

  “Blowing like a son of a bitch,” he said.

  “It is,” Virgil said.

  “The two of you,” he said, shaking his head.

  “It is,” Virgil said.

  “I’ll be goddamn if they won’t let just anybody into this godforsaken territory.”

  “Who is ‘they’?” Virgil said.

&nbs
p; “Good goddamn question,” he said.

  Stringer saw Skillman under the piñon and pointed at him with his rifle.

  “I’ll be goddamn,” he said. “That one of ’em?”

  “Is,” Virgil said.

  Skillman sat with his back to the tree, looking at the ground.

  Stringer glanced around.

  “The other two?” he said.

  “Dead.”

  “Vadito?”

  “Yep,” Virgil said.

  Virgil tipped his head toward me.

  “Eight-gauge.”

  Stringer looked to me and nodded.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “What the hell are you gonna do with him?”

  “We’re gonna take him back to Cibola,” Virgil said.

  Skillman did not look up as his fate was being discussed. In fact, he’d kept this eyes trained down ever since we apprehended him.

  “He hurt?” Stringer said.

  Virgil looked over to Skillman for a moment and nodded.

  “Got shot in the shoulder,” Virgil said. “Bullet went clean through, but he’s tough.”

  Stringer nodded, looked around out into the darkness, then looked back to Virgil and me.

  “So what is it?” Virgil said.

  Stringer leaned his Winchester in the crux of a sage scrub and shook his head.

  “We are on one of them for sure,” Stringer said in a serious tone, then nodded deliberately and slowly. “Got one on the fucking run.”

  26

  “And I thought for sure,” Stringer said, “you was him.”

  “What have you got?” I said.

  “I got a posse of six with me and we been at it this afternoon. We got on their trail just about four o’clock.”

  “Their trail?” I said. “Thought you said one?”

  Stringer nodded.

  “We was following all four at first, but they split up. Three of them crossed the river twenty miles back. We went after them first but could not find any goddamn sign of them on the other side, they vanished.”

  “They know you are after them?” Virgil said.