Dead Man’s Hand (39 page)

“What is it?” hissed McCall. “
Do
you know them?”

Walking Bear only shook his head.

The line of straggling dead swelled and soon there were hundreds of bodies moving
past. Not just Cheyenne, but Arapaho and Crow, too. And Shoshone and Utes. Even Comanches.

Every one of them was marked with violence. The first few hundred had clearly been
shot or cut with sharp blades. McCall knew those kinds of wounds. Cavalry swords.
But eventually these thinned out and the ones who followed were marked by other kinds
of violence. The duller but still deadly wounds of sharpened stone axes. Cruder arrows.
Rounded red craters from hurled rocks.

All dead, all carrying with them the proof of their own deaths.

No
, McCall thought, correcting his own error in perception.
The proof of their own murders.

And that’s what this was. A procession of the murdered. The slain. None of them looked
withered from disease or starvation. Every single man here had been clubbed or stabbed
or shot.

Even this perception had to be corrected, and McCall closed his eyes for a moment
to summon the will to see what was there.

He opened his eyes as a woman walked past. Her clothes were torn to reveal bruised
breasts and bloody thighs, and she carried the broken remains of her child in her
arms. The child wriggled against her breast, seeking milk that had gone cold and sour
in the grave.

There were other women.

Other children.

Many of them.

Too many of them.

Were these the children of Sand Creek? If he looked too closely would he see faces
that had looked up at him as his blade had plunged down? Would he see accusation in
eyes that had watched him take aim with pistol and rifle?

“You don’t have to look,” said Walking Bear.

“I…”

The Cheyenne pointed. A white woman staggered past, her clothes as completely torn
as the Indian woman’s had been. Her eyes as haunted, her skin bled as pale. Three
children followed her, their bodies crisscrossed with cuts. Hundreds of cuts.

They hurried to catch up with the Indian woman, and as McCall watched, the women fell
into step with one another.

Tears burned their way down McCall’s cheeks.

He said nothing as the legions of the murdered passed by. Walking Bear put his face
in his hands and wept silently. They stayed where they were, one sitting on a rock,
the other sitting on the dirt, both of them witnessing the procession.

Soon there was another change. The white corpses thinned and eventually there were
no more of them. But the Indians changed, too. Their clothing and jewelry was different.
Elaborate beadwork gave way to dyed leather, and then to plain leather. And finally
to rough hides of buffalo and other animals.

These Indians had different faces. More like Chinamen, but coarse and blunt, with
broader noses.

Yet each of these, even the most savage-looking among them, bore the mark of a stone
knife, a heavy club, or the splayed bruising of choking hands.

“All of them?”

The words startled McCall and he turned to see that Walking Bear, his face scarred
by tears, was staring at the dead. He shook his head slowly back and forth in a denial
so deep that it made his whole body tremble.

“What?” asked McCall.

“Look at them,” said Walking Bear. “Every single one of them.”

McCall didn’t need to ask what Walking Bear meant. He knew. He saw.

He understood.

Eventually the last of the Indians walked past, and it was only then that McCall realized
that there had been many animals walking with them. All along, starting with the horses.

Dogs, wolves, antelope, elk.

Every kind of bird.

Rabbits and squirrels.

Their fur or feathers slick with blood that had leaked from the wounds that had killed
them.

“Every one of them,” echoed McCall.

“Every one,” agreed Walking Bear.

Now it was only animals. And some were strange. Some were like things McCall only
ever saw in circuses or in books. Big elephants, but they looked bigger and they were
covered in long, shaggy hair. Bears that towered taller than the greatest grizzly.
Monstrous wolves. And beasts unlike anything McCall had imagined in his drunkest nights
or in his worst nightmares. Things like reptiles that were so massive that their footfalls
shook the world. Bob screamed as they passed. Some lumbered along on four titanic
legs; creatures whose heads rose on necks that arched up as long and slender as tree
trunks. Others stalked forward on two immensely powerful legs, while absurdly small
forelegs clutched at the night air.

Even here, even as these giants from nightmare or from Hell itself thundered past,
McCall could see that their bodies were worn by tooth and claw.

“Every god damn one of them,” he said.

They sat there and watched and watched as the wheel of night turned and the dead paraded
by. Finally, Bob tore free of his tether and he ran off into the night. McCall expected
him to run away from the grisly procession, but the damned crazy horse galloped at
full speed in the same direction.

Eventually…

Eventually.

Silence settled over the camp. The last rumbled footsteps of the giants faded. With
slow hesitation the night sounds returned. A cricket. An owl. The crackle of the logs
turning in the fire.

McCall looked at Walking Bear. Both men had long ago stopped crying. Their tears had
dried to dust on their faces.

“Every single one,” said McCall once more, and the Cheyenne nodded.

With a long, deep sigh, Walking Bear got heavily to his feet.

“Guess I should go, too.”

“Go?” asked McCall. “Go where?”

“Wherever they’re going.”

“And where’s that?” McCall’s voice was sharp and cold. “Are they going to Heaven?
To Hell?”

Walking Bear shook his head. “I’m not a shaman, white man. I’m a warrior. It’s not
for someone like me to understand the mysteries.”

“Isn’t it?” demanded McCall.

The big Indian gave him a small, slow smile. “Are you coming?”

McCall tried to laugh, but the effort hurt his stomach.

He got to his feet, though. “Go where?” he asked again.

Walking Bear said nothing.

“I
can’t
go where you’re going,” insisted McCall.

“You’re dead.”

“You should know.”

“I
do
know. Like you said, I killed you twice.”

“Once was probably enough,” said Walking Bear.

For some reason that McCall could not understand, they smiled at each other. Then
they laughed out loud.

“I guess I’m sorry for shooting you,” said McCall after their laughter bubbled down
and died out.

“No,” said Walking Bear. “You’re not. If you could, you’d do it again. I think you
got the habit now. I mean… twice.”

They laughed again.

“So,” said McCall awkwardly, “what now? Is this some kind of lesson? Am I supposed
to ask for you to forgive me?”

“I wouldn’t,” said Walking Bear. “I know I was educated by the Quakers, but I’m pretty
sure I don’t forgive you. At least not yet. I’ve only been dead for a little bit.
Maybe I’ll come round to it.”

“Yeah,” said McCall. “Maybe. But where does that leave me? Are you going to just walk
off? How am I supposed to deal with this? How am I supposed to live with this kind
of thing in my head? Is this some kind of spiritual lesson? Am I supposed to go back
to town and devote my life to good works? Is that how it ends?”

Walking Bear looked at him for a long time. Half a minute, maybe more.

“No, white man, I don’t think that’s how it ends. And I’m pretty sure you know it.”

McCall tried to look at him, to see the meaning in Walking Bear’s eyes, but he couldn’t
do it. He turned away.

“Don’t,” he said. “I know what you’re going to say, but don’t say it.”

Walking Bear was silent.

“I’m
not
dead, god damn it.”

Walking Bear said nothing.

“I’m not.”

“Okay,” said the Cheyenne.

“Okay,” said McCall.

His stomach hurt. He touched the bent belt buckle. Felt where the rifle bullet had
struck. Traced the outline of the curved metal.

Felt the hole.

Slipped a finger inside. It was cold in there.

He turned and looked at Bob. Saw the big ragged exit wound where a bullet had punched
its way out of him.

Closed his eyes.

A last tear broke from the corner of his eye.

“Shit,” he said.

“Yeah,” agreed Walking Bear. “But… you knew it already. Didn’t you?”

McCall tried to hold in a sob, but it snuck past his clenched teeth.

The night wind whistled through the branches of the bristlecone tree.

“It…” began McCall, but his voice broke. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“No.”

“If we’re dead, then where are we?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is this heaven?”

“It’s not any heaven I heard of,” said Walking Bear. “It’s not the Quaker heaven and
it’s not Cheyenne heaven.”

“Then what? Are we in Hell?”

“Does it feel like Hell?”

McCall thought about it. “No.”

“Then I guess it’s not Hell. Half the people we saw weren’t killers. Not the women
or the children. Why would they go to Hell just because they were murdered?”

“Then if it’s not Hell,
what
is it?” growled McCall.

“I don’t know,” repeated Walking Bear, leaning on each separate syllable.

They stood in the dark, in the wind, in the night.

“I’m going to go,” said Walking Bear.

This time McCall said nothing.

“Are you coming?” asked the Cheyenne.

“You don’t know what’s out there,” said McCall softly, nodding toward the east, where
everyone and everything else had gone.

“No,” agreed Walking Bear. He touched the bullet holes on his chest. “I only know
what’s here.”

With that he gave McCall a single nod, turned, and walked slowly toward the eastern
darkness.

Jonah McCall stood there, watching him go. The pistol was a cold, heavy weight in
his hand. He raised the gun and held it out. Starlight gleamed along its length. He
uncurled his fingers one at a time and then pulled back his thumb.

The gun toppled to the ground for the third time.

For the last time.

“I’m sorry,” he said. But he didn’t say it loud enough for anyone to hear but himself.

He brushed the tear from his cheek, took a long breath, let it out very slowly, and
began walking. Maybe he’d catch up with Walking Bear. Maybe not.

He thought about the comet that had burned its way across the sky and wondered if
it had been an omen.

Probably.

But of what?

He didn’t know the answer to that question, either. Maybe there would be answers out
there in the darkness.

Maybe not.

He kept walking.

The night, very gently but very firmly, closed its fist around him.

“Are you sure she can do it?” the boy asked Nate as he watered their trio of horses.

Lily was standing right beside him and had both a name and ears. But she knew the
boy—Will—wasn’t trying to be rude; he was simply like most of the young men they recruited:
rarely set foot off his family homestead, rarely seen womenfolk other than his momma
and sisters. And frontier mommas and sisters did not look like Lily.

Even now, as Will talked about her, he couldn’t look her way—as if merely to glimpse
her might damn his mortal soul. Lily could point out that his soul ought to be a lot
more worried about the thieving that was coming, but to a boy like Will, that was
part of life. Pretty girls with painted faces were not.

Lily’s face was, of course, not painted right now. She was dressed in breeches, boots,
and an overcoat, with her hair pushed up under her hat. It didn’t matter. Will still
wouldn’t look.

“Can she do it?” he asked again. “I mean no offense—”

“Then stop giving it,” Nate growled.

Lily noticed a cloud of dust cresting the rise. “I do believe my wardrobe has arrived.”

Emmett and Levi rode up, their horses run hard, flanks heaving. They had arranged
to meet at midday and the sun had passed its zenith a while back.

“Had some difficulties,” Emmett said as he nudged his horse to water.

“That it?” Nate pointed at the wrapped parcel behind Levi’s saddle. When Levi nodded,
Nate took it and said to Lily, “Come on.”

* * *

Lily let Nate lead her behind an outcropping of rock. Emmett and Levi knew better
than to sneak a look while she was dressing, and Lily was quite certain Will wouldn’t
dare, but Nate believed in coppering his bets. Otherwise, things would get messy.
Nate didn’t take kindly to trespass of any sort.

“We cutting the boy loose after the job?” he asked as they walked.

She nodded. “That’s best. It’s not working out. You promised Wilcox you’d try him.
You did.”

Nate grunted and handed her the parcel. As she untied it, she snuck a peek at him.
Six feet tall. Well built. Rough featured, but not in a way that was displeasing,
at least not to her. What she noticed most, though, was what she’d noticed about Nate
from the start: the uncanny way he carried himself. When he moved, he was like a catamount
on the prowl. Yet most of the time he wasn’t moving at all, standing so still he seemed
a statue, only his eyes moving, his gaze scanning the landscape.

It wasn’t natural, that complete stillness, that constant alertness. She wondered
why others never thought it peculiar. She had, right from that first time, seeing
him across the saloon. He’d noticed her, too, but not in the way men usually did.
He’d only stared, no expression, no reaction. Yet his gaze hadn’t left her as she’d
taken a table with the rest of her acting troupe.

The trouble had begun later that evening, when a gambler made the mistake of equating
actresses with whores. It was a common misconception. Lily couldn’t even properly
blame the man, considering that her two companions had already accepted paid invitations.
The acting life required a second income; Lily made hers with light fingers.